“That’s easy for you to say, Jeff. You don’t have kids and a family.”
“They wouldn’t touch ’em,” Jeff said. He stopped rubbing his face and looked over at his brother. They were close—but in a way that usually involved slugging each other to solve differences. “I won’t let anyone touch them. I promised you that before, and I promise you now.”
“Are you going to fight off the whole coalition with your fists, brave boy?” Chad said.
“You know we ain’t got any more of that blood pressure medicine in these parts, don’t ya, Chadster?” Dane asked.
“Oh, let’s not even start on about you.”
“Look, it’s over,” Jeff said. “They aren’t going to let me fight again. The only reason they trotted me out against that meathead was because they thought he’d smash my brains in. End my little streak.”
“Well, he didn’t,” Chad said.
“Sorry to be such a disappointment.”
The crowd cheered in the background, signaling that the next fight was under way. The way they oohed and aahed back and forth made it sound like a much closer fight than Jeff’s had been a few minutes ago. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the social worker scribbling furiously on his notepad. It likely contained a report for the mayor of Fifth Springs, but Jeff had talked his way out of trouble before. He figured he could do it one more time.
“I haven’t been a top farmhand in months,” Jeff said. “And I’ll get into a scuffle at work or something—let someone think he’s a hero for knocking me down. It’ll blow over, and like Dane said, they aren’t going to let me fight again, so that’s the end of it anyway.”
Chad looked over to the social worker and back to Jeff.
“See that it is,” Chad said. “Everett is getting some grand ideas, thinking you’re some sort of vagrant.”
“Cute kid,” Dane said. “Too bad vagrants have to do more than break their knuckles across a blacksmith’s face. I hear you have to be willing to suck out your enemies’ souls, and Jeff doesn’t know the first thing about having a soul, let alone stealing them.”
“Even worse,” Chad said, ignoring Dane like usual. “You’re inspiring him. The poor boy is starting to dream about his future.”
He was only half joking when he said it. They had never been fans of the coalition, but living in a world with Apostles didn’t allow for any alternatives. Despite its shortcomings, the coalition had provided some stability for the decimated and fractured human race. Jeff had grown up in worse times, when men had waged wars over what little the Apostles had left behind.
“Wouldn’t want that,” Jeff said. The sad thing was that he was starting to believe it himself. Survival of the species required sacrifices from everyone. That’s what the coalition said, so that’s what everyone did—they sacrificed their time, food, and dreams. “The sooner the kid accepts that there isn’t anything in this world to dream about, the better.”
“Don’t talk like that,” Chad said.
“I thought you wanted me to be more realistic. Quiet things down. Stay grounded.”
“Well, it sounds worse when you actually go along with it. Frankly, it makes me feel uncomfortable when you agree with me.”
The crowd roared as the next fight ended. A sterling redheaded man had defeated a bald man who didn’t have much muscle on him but had an extraordinarily long reach. Jeff shook his head as the redhead danced around like a boy on the day a trade envoy returned.
“I’m headed out,” Jeff said. “I’ve got work to catch up on.”
Participating in the fights didn’t give him a pass on any of his labor. He’d taken the afternoon off to prepare, and now he had the promise of a long night trying to figure out ways to squeeze some life out of the oldest energy cells in the community. The only good news was that once he fixed the first one, he’d be able to listen to a book while he worked on the rest.
“When are you going to find a girl?” Chad asked when the cheers of the crowd were starting to fade behind them.
“It’s not because he ain’t trying,” Dane said. “Poor chap just don’t have much to work with, although getting his face rearranged today should help.”
“I told Charlotte I’d ask,” Chad said. “So don’t be mad at me. She wants the kids to have cousins.”
“There aren’t many Charlottes out there,” Jeff said.
“And they wouldn’t be interested if there were,” Dane added.
Jeff gave Dane a weak shove, knocking him off step but not strong enough to push him over. He was Jeff’s oldest friend and current roommate. They had lived together since Chad had gotten married seven years ago, just a few months before Everett had been born. Although the crumbling apartment building they lived in wasn’t the nicest place in Fifth Springs, it felt more like home than anywhere ever had.
The sun was setting, coloring the sky a deep orange. Ahead of them, small lights began to pop up behind the walls of their community as families activated the energy cells that powered the remaining amenities Fifth Springs had to offer. There were fewer lights than usual because many people had gone to watch the fights. It was one of the only forms of entertainment that the coalition allowed. And it was the only one that Jeff liked. He was horrible at basketball, and he was too slow to win races.
“I need to visit the kids more,” Jeff said. “There’s just been lots of stuff needing to be fixed lately. And they expect me to get just as much done even when they make me take a shift on the farms.”
“But Chad told me earlier that they were just getting over their nightmares—” Dane stopped as the sirens cut him off.
Chills raced up Jeff’s back as he looked around. The sirens were often an accident or a drill, but the way the stadium had gone silent made this time feel different. He met Chad’s eyes as they turned around to look back at what was left of the old stadium, their feet already backpedaling toward Chad’s house.
When threats arrived, Jeff had one responsibility, the one thing that kept him from leaving the community or joining the braves: keeping his family safe. He didn’t have children of his own, but he had sworn to protect Chad’s family long ago. He refused to let anything rob him of his family; he’d sworn it to himself after the warlords had swept through Fourth Springs.
The ground rumbled, and Jeff knew this wasn’t a drill.
“Not good,” Dane mumbled distantly.
The small earthquake stopped just in time for the screams from the stadium to start. A brilliant light stung Jeff’s eyes as it streamed from the center of the old stadium—a new sun was forming where they had stood just a few minutes before. The cries stopped as the new sun suddenly burst. The shockwave hit them before Jeff could move, sending him flying backward into the ground, grinding his body across the remnants of the long-destroyed city.
Jeff managed to cover his face from the cloud of billions of tiny pieces of aged concrete, steel, and humans reduced to dust. His head buzzed, and his body felt like Canon had punched him in the face a hundred times over, but he pulled himself to his feet.
The dust parted, and a metallic god stood where the stadium had been. Its 150-foot-tall body pulsed with energy, and its wings flexed in the air nearly twice as high. The birdlike features of its wings and head were combined with six long, humanlike arms; it was straight out of a nightmare. Except it was worse than a monster from a dream. It was an Apostle, the first Jeff had ever seen. And people didn’t live to see an Apostle twice.
“We’re dead,” Dane groaned.
Jeff ripped his eyes from the Apostle; his body was covered in cuts and bruises, but he was still alive. Chad had landed not far from him, but his brother was already on his feet, running toward the barriers that surrounded their community. Jeff made his way to Dane and pulled him to his feet. The Apostle’s wings detached from its massive body and shattered into a thousand autonomous pieces.