Empire's End

Forty-Five / Final Things

Voorhees heard another commotion outside the Hummer. The door beside his head was torn open, and freeing cold washed over him.

“Where is she?” cried Adam.

“I don’t know what happen,” Voorhees breathed, enunciating as best he could. His strength was failing. He’d held onto this fragile, broken body long enough to finish Meyer; now, just when he thought he could finally lay his head to rest, another crisis. It never ends.

“I heard the driver yell at her to run,” he told Adam. “Then I heard him die.”

Adam strapped the scythe on and turned to face the empty street. Gaylen was an inferno. Somehow, the icy winter winds were still cutting through this concrete canyon, but its walls were all ablaze and flakes of snow were eroding away before they touched the asphalt.

And, at the end of the street, a hunchbacked rotter was dancing. Arms spread wide, head titled, a crazed grin on its face, it writhed in dark celebration. It beckoned to him.

Adam broke into a run. Nickel stopped dancing and lumbered into a mass of flames: a huge building that had been a train station a century prior. Adam followed without hesitation. He knew it was a trap. He knew it was the last trap, the end of this grim campaign — but he knew they had her.

He ran into the station. Tongues of heat crawled across a vaulted ceiling five stories overhead. He was flanked by columns bathed in fire. All was silent but for the crackling of the flames.

Nickel ran at him from the left. He turned and plunged the scythe through the rotter’s black heart. Threw the body aside. Too easy.

Eviscerato roared from the other end of the room.

He crouched like a threatened animal, pacing back and forth, Lily clutched against his chest.

“Let her go!” Adam bellowed.

The King of the Dead cocked his head and clacked his teeth together: CLACK-CLACK-CLACK, like some sort of primitive taunt. He tightened his grip on Lily. She screamed.

“I said LET HER GO GODDAMMIT!”

Eviscerato held out his right arm. He shook it violently, then pointed at Adam. The scythe. He wanted it off.

Adam removed the straps and let the blade clatter on the marble floor. “All right!”

The Petrified Man seized him about the waist in a brutal bear-hug, swinging him high into the air and then squeezing his body against the zombie’s own bony bulk.

Then he was spinning through the air — a column approached — his back was folded around it for one brief, agonizing moment before he slumped to the floor. The Petrified Man was upon him immediately, smashing his head into the column. He grabbed the behemoth’s shoulders and pulled himself up to slug him in the jaw. The zombie simply smashed him into the column again. Adam’s world trembled. Bits of flaming plaster fell around him. Now flying again — slamming into the floor. Lily screaming.

Eviscerato hurled her aside and raised his cane over his head. Charged at Adam. The former Reaper lifted his head, and the cane lashed him across the jaw, sending him reeling straight into the Petrified Man’s arms. He was turned upside-down and swung into another column. Unconsciousness threatened to overtake him.

Eviscerato drove the cane deep into Adam’s gut, piercing his false flesh and churning his insides. Adam howled in agony. Eviscerato snapped his teeth and smiled that dreadful smile of his, that showman’s smile. Watch the fallen angel suffer and die at the hands of a mere human — less than a human, in fact! Nothing more than a rotten corpse, a dancing, capering corpse, meekest of all men — inheritor of the earth! The world is dead and soon she will be dead with us, Reaper. And you will be NOTHING—

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.