Empire's End

Epilogue / Afterlife

As dawn broke, Jeff Cullen breathed in the cloying scent of death and coughed loudly. Perched in the back of a Jeep, he called to the nearest soldier on the city perimeter. “How long do you suppose we need to stay out here?”

“You can go anytime you want,” the soldier muttered. “Your job’s done.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Cullen snapped. “May I remind you that I am—”

He was grabbed from behind and thrown to the ground. The tip of a blade carved from bone pressed into his throat.

A charred man in soot-stained robes knelt over the senator. “You did this?”

Cullen started to scream and felt the point of the blade bite into his flesh. “Oh God. Lower your weapons!” he called to the soldiers around him. “Stay back! Lower your weapons!” But not a single one of them had raised his or her gun anyway.

“How many people did you kill today?” Adam snarled.

“I — we had to do it! We did it for the other cities! My job is to serve the greater good! That’s what I did!”

Adam came close enough for Cullen to smell his burnt flesh. He turned the blade as if readying to strike. Cullen’s rhetoric broke down into senseless babble.

“Resign your post,” Adam rasped. “No more. Never again.”

The senator nodded quickly. “Yes. Yes! Of course I will. I should. I’m sorry, so sorry…

Adam rose and was gone.

Soldiers looked down at Cullen with contempt. Surely they didn’t take what he’d said seriously, about resigning… but they were walking away from him now, and ignoring his pitiful cries.

Others glanced around in confusion at the man in white’s departure. One pointed toward the horizon.

The man in white sat on a pale horse. He raised his scythe into the air, a salute — then rode out of sight.

There was much work to be done.