She was not but a child wandering the killing fields of a city gone rotten. And yet she persisted, one foot in front of the other.
The man in shadows. She knew him only by hearsay. He sat next to her and gazed up at the stars, sneezing, shadows settling around him.
"It's not going to work," he said.
"What?"
"Your Jesus. Your God. He is dying; he is being beset on all sides."
And surely there was truth to this. Something weighed heavily on the chosen. They were killing as much as the monsiuers and seemed just as vile.
"What would you have me do?"
"I would have you die," the man in shadows replied. "And return to the earth."
"Do not speak of the earth. All you and your kind have done is sully it."
The man in shadows reared up, his eyes becoming twin red globes as his form stretched from horizon to horizon.
"Ours is the only path. The ebb and flow. You deny this?"
"I deny nothing. I only seek my god."
The man in shadow's eyes narrowed into slits.
"I can take you to him."
"That is impossible."
The man in shadows smiled.
"You people are so easy to trick."
***
When she was able to open her eyes she found herself in another place.
How many times--
How many times had she been here, in one form or another? To her left: nothing. To her right: the same. White windows reflecting what lay outside: the inevitable pull of the never-again.
She went back on her knees and waited, though this time she would not close her eyes. She listened, tried to still her beating heart but she knew what was coming and was afraid. She was only a child.
"Hello?"
A river, running through the white. She approached with tepid steps.
There, buried by waves: the bodies. A woman, with eyes white.
"They are yours."
He stood there watching the river. His buck-skull helm chipped on the edges.
"No," she whispered.
"The bombs were built by you. The soldiers were your children. None of this could ever be possible unless the word of God was on our side."
"No," she screamed.
He approached. And no nothing could stop him, not her god or any other, for here was the monument that would swallow them all up.
"Praise God--praise me and my iron fist. Your religion died the second the first child was set aflame. This has all only been a slow unwinding."
"I will show them the way. I will tell them about Jesus Christ."
He stopped, his chest shuddering, then he began to laugh. Whispering, horrible. A slithering tongue.
"What do you think happened before? They knew about the messiah, his miracles. They knew everything and they couldn't stop--they were so addicted to the thrust of violence they were willing to forsake all the world."
"I can help them!" she cried.
But Maxis shook his head.
"There is only one way forward. Us. Pray that your god saves you, for this is the end of the world, and if there's anyone to blame it's probably the thing that made it all possible."
She screamed: falling, falling...
***
She was in the dunes, the far-deserts east of the city-line. Why Maxis had taken her here, she could only guess. She remembered stories, of Jesus Christ walking into the desert and being tested by none other than the chief sinner himself.
She knelt down, and listened. The turning of the earth was incredible, a sort of fluctuation deep below the ground--
Leylines. They breathed below. Heathen-magic.
She could hear something. Out of desperation she took out the cross she kept hidden in her frayed, dead clothing.
From afar came the bombs. They arched and then fell, sundering earth. Such hellfire rivaled the will of any god. She watched on; how could she not? Tethered to this place like the ghosts before her.
"You will be remembered for one thing and one thing only: the death of all creation."
She wept, began clawing at the earth, cracking her nails, tears swarming her as she reached down with shaking hands and threw the cross into the hole.
Slivers--mere shadows. She realized they were the christians. Those of the station, garbed in white.
They encroached upon her. She couldn't stop shaking. Frantic, she sought anything, anything at all in that flat place until finally her hands curved around that piece of wood and--without thinking at all--thrust it up.
Their eyes became wide. They smiled with cut teeth. They reached out; they called her a whore, bedlam in denial.
A thousand voices, and then--
***
A soothing light. A distant voice:
"One. Eleven. Forty-two. Eleven. Eight. Five. Thirty-six. Four-hundred thousand five hundred and sixty-eight--"
And on, and on.
YOU ARE READING
Molly - Part 4
Science FictionThere wasn't a statue of liberty anymore--there was no need for it. And as the sun dawned and the fog rolled in and the buildings became so high they blotted out what little sunlight there was it could only be said that yes: this was the end of the...
