Tag: S. M. Nolan

The Collective: Part 10 (Conclusion)

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

10.

Retribution

Rachel had been right, the streets were total chaos. The diamond-formation the group took up as they walked was the only thing approaching order in all of Tokyo. Everywhere people rampaged back and forth, lingered on street corners, in building alcoves, each of them groggy, confused. Most were emaciated, death-camp refugees who’d only just escaped. It seemed too, every one bore at least some symptom of mania from addiction. They craved the ‘net like a junkie craved a fix, but there wasn’t a scrap of electro-dope to be found in all of Tokyo anymore.

The first armored transports they found were empty. Evidently the GSS had deployed before the pulse took out the city’s systems. Whomever had been en-route was no doubt now foot-bound, likely on the way to whatever rendezvous they’d been given. If Lex knew anything about the Collective’s two, remaining members, she knew the American head of GSS would be in-country to keep order.

James Hobbs’ cruelty was unmatched, by the Collective or otherwise. He’d been established the prisons and protocols for dealing with those that refused to sleep. He’d also ensured anyone whom survived those protocols lost a piece of themselves. More importantly, he personally saw to the interrogation and brutalization of Alexis Thorne.

He’d given her more than a few injuries himself. His own, bare hands, had intimidated and threatened her with every form of violence, and made good on some. Hobbs was a sadistic bastard Lex would ensure paid for his cruelties.

Finding him wasn’t nearly as hard as Lex thought it would be. Arrogance and over-confidence could be added to the list of the scumbag’s traits. He and his men had broadcast their location with gun-fire and explosions from a park-square near the city’s center. Lex and the others arrived at its perimeter through the herds that stampeded away like rats from a tidal-wave. What vehicles still worked formed a full barricade around the large square.

Marble statues gleamed like porcelain under flood-lights, powered by generators inside. The white-marble matched concrete walkways. Equally tinted, extra-wide planters were arranged around the flat square beside benches. Japanese Maples, Cherry and Plum Blossoms loomed beautifully over colorful hydrangeas, chrysanthemums, and morning glories. The palette of color on white was warmth against the black steel of vehicles and armed soldiers assembled or patrolling inside.

Lex had gathered her people for this. She’d sent runners to round everyone up. The ever-awakened made their way through the crowd on all sides of the square, marching as Lex was, Rachel beside her. In a moment, Lex and the others would strike with the fury of oppressed millions.

The crowd did its best to unwittingly thwart their advance, but each side reported through ear-comms. The city seemed to take a breath. Then, with the scream of APC guns, exhaled to fan flames of chaos and revolution.

The barricade of vehicles had turned on its owners. Twenty-five millimeter cannons diverted the tides of chaos from the crowd outside to the one inside. Generators exploded. Fuel lines spilled. Columns of fire sprayed in all directions. Ammunition caches were immolated. Stray bullets fired randomly, caused bodies to fall with those from the vehicles’ fire.

The square became a smoke-filled slaughter-house. The only light left was that of the vehicles’ muzzle flashes and growing flames. Men and women flashed through it. They tossed aside arms, fled, died, or huddled in terror. The APC’s guns beat a constant war-rhythm. Dying screams syncopated with splattering blood. The mayhem turned the newly-awakened into gawking statues.

All at once the guns went quiet. No-one on either side moved. All were still. Only a few cries from the dying broke the silence. They settled, soothed or dead, into nothingness. The last of the guns’ smoke rolled across the square, and a silhouette appeared. Blades pointed downward at its sides. A leather coat swirled behind it. Confident steps propelled it forward.

In the square’s center, a man rose from behind a planter, pistol in hand. The aged, graying features of the American hardened. His sweat-lined, dirt-covered face pulled taught defiantly. He emerged, outgunned and outnumbered, but with his weapon trained on the figure. A lean to his posture said he was ready to duck back if need be, but he sensed Lex’s presence was more a challenge than anything. She continued forward. Hobbs shouted throw down her weapons, warned of impending fire.

Rachel watched from atop an APC beside Ryo and Kaz. Another shout. Then, a three-count. A shot rang out. Both sides saw the silhouette hit. Blood sprayed shadows. Lex didn’t flinch. Ryo readied to radio for fire.

Rachel stopped him. “No,” she said, her voice pained, airy. “She has to do this herself.”

Hobbs yelled something Lex ignored. To either side she was merely a faceless warrior, a silhouette, as symbolic as anyone could hope for. No bullet could stop her now.

Another shout. A second bullet sprayed blood near Lex’s hip. She took the hit, fueled by adrenaline, warmed by leaking blood and vengeance. She marched in stance, blades hungry for their bounty. Awakened and soldier alike watched, afraid to breathe.

A grunt and a growl. Five more rounds littered Lex’s torso. Anyone else would have been dead. She should have been, but her body was no longer her own. It was fueled by revenge, justice for countless lost and aimless souls. An almost a collective gasp sounded when Hobbs emptied his magazine into Lex.

She kept walking. He was terrified.

In thirty years of special forces work, running GSS and its prison camps, and breaking its prisoners, he’d never once seen someone so wholly refuse to die. Her face emerged from smoke, stained orange and red from the fires at her sides. Her leather coat shined wet with blood while her clothing clung to her body, obvious even at-range. Fifteen holes leaked the last of her life from her, poor kill-shots each of them.

Hobbs cast the gun away, Lex at arm’s-length. He threw a punch. It was caught in her left arm. Her right sword’s hilt slammed his face. She twisted his arm until it crunched, dislocated. The right blade stab his left thigh, forced him to a half-kneel. His left hand grasped her left sword, managed to clench it. In a single move, the swords plunged through opposing flesh.

Lex didn’t budge. Hobbs’ eyes went wide. Blood began dribbled down his chin. With one, final rip, Lex tore the sword from her own abdomen. It thrust downward beside the other in Hobbs’ chest. His eyes rolled back. He slipped backward, dead.

Rachel bolted. Lex fell to her knees, slumped sideways, caught before she hit the ground.

“Lex!?” Rachel said, her composure cracking. She felt Lex’s blood coat her lower-half, “Lex? C’mon. No! No!”

A glimmer beside Rachel’s face twinkled in Lex’s vision, “Stars over Tokyo…” Lex met Rachel’s eyes. The last of the color drained from her face, “F-finish it.”

Ryo and the others approached slowly. Lex’s eyes shut with a final exhale. Rachel couldn’t help but nod, caress her hair while her eyes leaked tears. Her chest fluttered with sharp breaths.

She eased from beneath Lex, “I will, Lex. I p-promise.”

She laid Lex flat. The city eased into motion again. They closed-in somberly, soldier and awakened alike, to see the woman who’d defied death– even if for an instant. Rachel choked down tears, oblivious to the encroaching presence. She rose to her feet, legs strong as she stepped to Hobbs’ dead body.

With a resounding rip, she tore Lex’s swords from the body, “There is one member of the Collective left alive. We finish this– for Lex.”

***

It was a little over a month later. The awakened had only just begun to adjust to the world. Tokyo was already largely rebuilt from the chaos but the global economy was still in shambles. Most places were back to the barter system. Others were in full-blown civil war. A few however, like Monte Carlo were still civilized. There, most everything came on credit from fear or respect. It was only logical then, that the last member of the Collective had sought refuge in its coastal embrace.

He was a man older than time itself nowadays; Wei Zhou, former-chemist and researcher turned entrepreneur and billionaire mogul. He’d stumbled onto a formula to slow the aging process. He was the eldest, highest ranking member of the Collective. It had been his brain-child decades ago, before it could even be enacted. The man was cunningly clever, difficult as wet eel to pin down, and just as snake-like. The local mafioso protected him like their own, but even they feared the incise of dual blades.

Zhou sipped from a wine glass on a balcony that overlooked the Mediterranean sea. He wore a white sport-coat and slacks that blew in a mild wind above his tucked-in, black shirt. Between his sunglasses, panama hat, and the Gardenia in his lapel, he exuded all the intimidation and class of mafia Don himself.

He swirled the Cabarnet Sovignon in his glass, looked through it to check its color and consistency. The whole of the world around him was reflected in a deformed caricature, including a shadow.

He spoke french, “I said I was not to be disturbed.”

A hand whirled him around. His face met Rachel’s. The shock bucked the glass away. It shattered red wine across the balcony’s paver-stones.

She grit her teeth, “Alexis Thorne sends her regards.”

Lex’s blades pierced Zhou’s chest together. He fell to his knees, hat blown to the wind. He stared up, his white suit stained red. Rachel pulled the blades out. Zhou fell, dead. Rachel’s teeth ground with satisfaction. Lex’s blades whirled to fling blood away.

She turned to march away, comm active as she re-sheathed the blades, “It’s done.”

Poetry-Thing Thursday: The Ball for Society

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

Leave the world better than you entered it,
or else don’t come at all.
‘Cause laziness is rife with indecision,
and society’s come to call.

Its lights are on,
and the porch awaits,
for you to sit upon.
So take your place.

Not merely one of you,
but all.
Change can’t happen otherwise–
no matter how big or small.

Stiffen your lips,
so that all may see,
and come sway your hips,
at the Ball for Society.

Where wit and wisdom’s profound,
and blood from your heart does pour,
So use it, or lose it on the sound,
of your ass hitting the floor.

For if we don’t help the world grow,
than no-one will,
or even show,
but there’s work to do still.

Bonus Poem: You Died!

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

Skulls and torture,
blisters of pain,
boils on hollows,
that cry out your name.

Dark is the soul,
of the undead laid claim,
to the slaughtered foul,
in the wrath of rain.

Rank, rotten teeth,
in a smile from hell,
mired in the meek,
what bloody secrets you tell.

From the edge of a blade made of scorn,
to the tip of the tooth,
blows the war’s hallowed horn,
while in fire is the truth,
e’er to be reborn.

Seek out the sisters,
alone in the mists,
comfort the statues,
fallen amid trysts

And when from the edges of hell you return,
remember the souls of the wanton, forlorn,
For these are the creatures that like you will burn,
in the pits and fires, your souls to be torn.

Seek out the knowledge,
It cleverly fits,
in a narrative fashion,
that requires wits.

Remember to roll,
the dice to one side,
lest you see the toll,
once more; “You died!”

Short Story: A Measure of Compassion

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

The old man sat in his rocking chair on the front porch of his home. The scenery was something out of an old photograph from the dust-bowl with only the most minor, verdant patches to differentiate the times. His shotgun sat to one side, leaned up against the wall between him and the old hound dog whose eyes were as milky white as her owner’s.

Rain began to beat a steady tempo atop the porch’s awning above. The dusty horizon was splattered darker with each moment that passed. Even before he’d smelled the rain, he’d felt it in his bad knee. A century ago he might’ve been out dancing in the downpour with Mary, but she’d been gone decades now, and damned if the old hound hadn’t developed two left-feet in her old age.

There was a streak through the sky like some fool’d shot a missile out of the old nike base down the way. He almost didn’t believe his eyes, but the hound’s milky-whites reflected the elongated string of fire that arced downward through the sky too. He was convinced, especially when in the distance, past old Peterson’s former farm, it struck the ground like a flaming lawn dart. There was all manner of fire and smoke billowing along the horizon, but given not a soul lived ’round these parts anymore, he sensed he’d be the only one able to investigate.

He hobbled down the few steps to the wet earth, one-two’d in his half-hunch toward his blue pick-up. The dog waddled along after him, her steps even less sure of themselves than his. As usual he stooped to lift her, help her up into the truck. It grumbled to a start beneath them, began the turbulent trek up the dirt-drive and across the cracked asphalt for the abandoned fields to Peterson’s back acres.

The smoke and fire died down as the rain became more dense, weighted the day’s light nearer toward nighttime darkness. Were he not so sure of his whereabouts, he might’ve lost he and the poor hound in the muddy landscape ’til night turned to day. Instead, he jostled his way over the hard, wet terrain toward the smoke-plume that lessened with each breath.

The truck’s head-lights splayed over the first signs of wreckage with a dutiful gaze. Bits of tall metal stuck from the ground at all angles, most red-hot. Whatever had crashed didn’t look like any missile he’d seen in his army days. As a matter of fact, the bits didn’t look like anything he’d ever seen before. They weren’t made of any metal he could place, too dull for steel, too firm for aluminum and with a sort of queer glow that looked more like oil on water in the sunlight.

He slipped out of the truck to help the hound down to her feet, then groped along a fender to cross the high-beams for the wreckage. The smoke was near gone by then, the fires embers along the edges of hot metal and smoldering grasses. The old man thought to go closer, but even the hound knew it best not to. Instead, the pair circled wide around the area, made sure to lean in over the taller edges of the dirt crater that’d been carved out for better looks of the interior.

It wasn’t until the two came full-circle that the old hound began her howling. She danced back and forth in place, left-footed and all, with her ears back and her arthritic spine stiff. Her growls became howls as much aged-whooping coughs as they were canine vocalizations. The old man put a hand on her head to calm her, but she only went quiet. She still danced backward with a wheezy whimper, as ready to flee as any creature he’d ever seen.

It was then that a shadow caught his eye at the edge of the head-lights. It turned to a silhouette of gangly, human-like features as it clawed itself through the dirt, drug itself forward. The old man would’ve run if he’d been capable of anything more than awe. The hound would’ve done the same if not for her stubborn devotion to staying at her master’s side. All the same she began her howling again, this time louder, more frightened than anything.

“Shush it now,” he said with a backward swat of the air. She went quiet as he stooped down, offered the poor soul a hand, “You alright there, friend?”

A curious bunch of clicks and sharp sounds echoed in his head, as if they’d come from his own thoughts. He wasn’t sure whether his mind had gone suddenly, but he kept himself focused on the wretch that drug itself toward the light. When its gnarled hand graced the light it was charred almost black over a deformed set of three fingers.

The strange hand reached for the old man to help while the weird clicks and screeches sounded again. He worked himself down to his knees, grasped the cold, wet hand that felt more like rubber than skin. With a heave, he drug the creature back to see the face of something more inhuman than even the most frightful carnival attractions from his youth.

“Good lord,” he said with a breathy voice. “You ain’t human.”

The dog whimpered as the creature came to a rest in his lap. He looked its head over to see the the viscous sheen of tears that leaked from black, oblong eyes. With a hand he ushered the hound over. She approached carefully, sniffing as she went. Another wheezy whimper saw her inch toward the creature’s face. It made a few clicks with heavy breaths, lifted a hand toward the dog. She slapped his face with a wet tongue, and the clicks and screeches made a stutter as if altogether shocked to laughter.

The old man cradled the creature’s head as it looked up, teary-eyed. For a moment there was a silence that even the rain didn’t feel right in breaking. Then, with that same curious way, words formed in his head as if from his own thoughts.

“Th-aankk you, fr-iend.”

With a last breath, its eyes closed and it went still.

The hound gave one, deep and mournful howl. The rain picked up. The old man did his best to lift himself and the creature for the back of his truck. By morning, a hole was dug. The creature filled it– just a little to the left of Mary in the back acre. He wasn’t sure whether to mark it with a cross or a star, so he left it blank.

He finished moving the last of the earth to fill the hole, leaned on the edge of his shovel while the hound laid in the dirt. Her milky-whites more sad than he’d ever seen ’em behind the little cyclones of dust kicked up from her hard snorts.

“I suppose we ought to say something,” he admitted aloud. The hound huffed a breath against the dirt and lifted her head. He scratched an eyebrow with a dirty thumb, “I don’t rightly know what to say though. If’n you think you got something, now’s the time.”

She gave a sharp whimper, went silent. They listened to the wind for a moment, his eyes on the sky above. She whimpered again and the wind stilled.

He nodded, “I suppose that’ll have to do.”

They returned home to retake their places on the porch. The old man settled into his chair as the hound collapsed in her usual way. He stared outward, uncertain of where the creature’d come from, but sure its final moments were as peaceful as they could’ve been, given the circumstances. That was something, he felt; if nothing else, any visitor should know a measure of compassion. His only regret was that he couldn’t show it more.