Empire's End

Five / Freedom

“I can point you toward the Great Cities, but that’s all I can do,” Thackeray told Adam the next morning. “We’re moving east.”

Adam had dreamt of Lily again. This time he saw her huddled in shadow, shivering, as thick flakes of snow settled in her long dark hair.

These were more than just dreams, he was sure. Once, he could have held her life’s flame in his very hands; now he could only guess at what fate had in store for her. He had to reach these Great Cities.

The girl, Josie, set about drawing Adam a map using charcoal on sackcloth. She paused to whisper something into Thackeray’s ear. He nodded at her, and the girl beamed at Adam.

The angel. It had been one of many personas he’d adopted over the years in order to deal with mortals. But it was this form, that of the pale man in black, that he was most comfortable in. Perhaps that was why he’d been reborn with this look. Perhaps he himself had willed it. So hard to remember. Day by day he was forgetting the details of his service on the other side.

“Before you go there,” Thackeray said,

“let me tell you why we’re not going with you. Let me tell you what I know about the men who built the Wall.

“A few years ago, I lived there. I trusted in the Senate, and even worked for them — I was an aide to the Senate’s President-for-life. Gillies. God-fearing son of a preacher. He really believed — still does — that it’s his calling to rebuild the world. For who, Man or God or both, I can’t tell ya. But he truly believes that what he’s doing is good, and right—and that’s the problem.

“When we came out here to try and sway the badlanders, I was on his side. Even when rotters swarmed the convoy in Utah and half of us were left for dead — still I was on his side. I shrugged off the badlanders’ offers of food and shelter and trekked back to the Great Cities with my colleagues. Back to Cleveland, where my mother lived.

“What happened there is beyond reprehensible. What they’ve done, in the name of what’s good and right, is depraved — and these atrocities are bred by ignorance, not evil.”

Adam listened, and Josie drew, while Thackeray told him everything.

“Here we are free,” he said when he was finished. “Here we take the good with the bad and we face our problems. We share grief as well as joy, and it makes us appreciate the joy all the more. I understood that, for when I came back to Utah, back to the badlanders, grieving, they took me in with open arms.”

He placed a hand on Adam’s shoulder. “You know what Man is capable of. You’ll see, and then you’ll understand too.”

Josie handed over the map. It was simple and straightforward: northeast until he hit the fabled Wall.

“We’re headed for the East Coast if you ever want to look us up. Maybe you’ll join us out there someday. Someday things will be right again. Trust me.”

Thackeray said those two words with such dead certainty that Adam wondered what he hadn’t been let in on.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said, rolling the map up and placing it inside his jacket. “I wish you the best, Thackeray.”

“Please. Todd.” Thackeray shook Adam’s hand for the last time. “Take care of yourself. And her.”

“I will.”

Thackeray and a couple other men walked Adam to the edge of the quarry.

“Listen, I have to ask you something,” Thackeray said. “You probably get this all the time…” He looked expectantly at Adam, who stared blankly back.

“About… the nature of things. God. Afterlife.”

“What about them?”

“Are they real?”

The other two men stopped, the same yearning in their eyes. It was almost childlike… and what good would it do them, really, to know?

Adam didn’t have to wrestle with that particular quandary. “I don’t know,” he said. “You have to understand that it was never necessary that I know such things as God’s nature, or where people go… so I never did.”

“Well, what do you think?” Thackeray pressed.

Adam forced a smile. “I think it’s all in what you believe. There’s no knowing.”

He had sensed high beings before. He knew there was something out there, that he’d come from somewhere… but whether or not that something gave a damn about humanity was another story.

“So who’s the ‘King of the Dead’?” he asked Thackeray. They were both glad, as it turned out, to change the subject.

“He used to run a traveling circus in the badlands. I know people who saw it — he would perform tricks with undead animals. People too. They say he was infected, and he’d let the rotters take bites out of him One night he kissed one and it tore his lips off. That’s what they say.

“They say that he eventually turned, but not alone. He talked his performers into turning with him. They were willingly infected — most of them anyway. I’ve heard of people committing suicide by infection but this was different. They celebrated their deaths. And when they came back, they kept traveling — kept performing, kept entertaining, audiences none the wiser until the next morning when the circus was gone and so were their children.”

“I don’t think such a thing is possible,” Adam said. “I’ve spent more a century among the dead. I’ve seen undead capable of frightening, lifelike things — but for ferals to work together, like a pack? That’s beyond their grasp. Their only drive is self-preservation.”

“Fair enough,” Thackeray replied. “Just remember that things change. You changed.”

“I did,” Adam said, “but by choice — and they have no will.”

He passed under the lizards hanging from their branches and gave the men a wave. “Be safe.”

“The East Coast!” Thackeray called. “Remember!”

Adam didn’t look back.