Ascension

Two people struggle through the end of the world.

Ascension

Do not confuse this with a confession or a history. But take it for what it is, my words to you about what happened to Angel and I. That was not her name and she hated me calling her that, because she didn’t understand at the time what it meant to me, and I couldn’t understand what it would mean to her eventually. She was young enough that we drew second, and sometimes dirty looks when we were in public together, yet old enough to be above those petty concerns. I am vague about her age not because it was all that shameful but because her youth survived childhood and all the injuries the world had heaped upon her. I could tell, and should tell you so that you understand her, but that would be a disservice to her memory and her trust in me. It is enough that she hated being called Angel because she thought they were pure and brilliant, whereas she saw her self as a stained and murky thing.

As for myself I was a realist of human nature, but melted whenever I saw her, and I often felt ashamed of myself for it. I was too old for her in the eyes of many, but still young enough to be forgiven for my foolish involvement with her. She called me by my full name, Alan, every time. Never shortened. Never my first and last name. Just my first name. She said it in a way that stood out to me and me alone. There was a silent accent hidden some where in the way she vocalized it that was distinct and unique.

As I am sure you have guessed, I loved her with a hopeless and unrealistic desperation. I am also sure that you have guessed that she did not love me as I would have hoped. Do not misunderstand me here. I know she loved me, but she had boundaries and limits that were self imposed. Be it because of her history and wounds, I will never truly know. I only know that she loved me and kept me at a safe distance from her life. It was a strange not romance, not-friendship that was blissfully torturous, and that would have gone on for years had it not been for the Ascension.

When it started we were on a book-hunting trip to the suburbs, indulging our mutual love of obscure bookstores. I had just parked the car. I was shutting off the radio when the buzzing tone of the emergency broadcasting system cut into the song, freezing my hand on the dial.

“This is not a test! This is not test!” I turned up the volume. “The Emergency Broadcasting System has been activated by order of the President. Major cities have come under attack by unknown foreign powers using biological weapons of an unknown nature. Citizens are advised to seek shelter and….” Then it was over and the radio fell silent. I was at first gripped with terror so deep and primal that, had Angel not been there, I might have acted without thinking.

“What?” She gasped. “What do we do?”

“We run.”

“Where?” Her voice was raised a few tones towards panic.

“Not here.”

“Alan!”

“I’m making this s**t up as I go!”

People around us were starting to run towards their cars and down the sidewalks. In the distance panicked screams could be heard mixing with sirens that only hastened the panic in the streets. I had no idea what to do, but I knew sitting in my parked car was a waste of time and that the roads were quickly clogging with desperate drivers, so our best bet was to go on foot. I reached behind the seat and grabbed my old and beaten backpack. It was worn but had no holes and had served me well for years. I stepped out and opened the trunk to start sifting through the useless crap that seemed to inhabit every trunk, I was looking for anything that might be useful. I came across an old wool blanket that I had intended to take the laundry-mat and shoved it in the bag hoping the stench of red wine and dark stains would not be an issue. There were some loose tools, a wrench and a hammer that felt greasy but were more than functional, so I threw them in with the blanket. A flashlight and a grease stained map rounded out the meager collection.

“We should go back to the city.” Angel was standing by the passenger door looking to the horizon, towards home.

“Have you tried your cell phone?” I said as I patted my pockets looking for my own cheap phone.

“It’s dead. Not just no single, dead.”

“Ugh.” Mine was dead as well. The screen was on, but there was nothing on it and none of the buttons did anything. “That’s bad.”

“Alan, a biological weapon wouldn’t affect cell phones or the radio... this doesn’t make sense.”

“No. And neither does standing here waiting for an answer.”

“We need to go home.” Her voice was determined and frightened. It was a bad idea in every way shape and form, but I couldn’t say no. Her family was in there somewhere, dealing first hand with this sudden attack. She would never be defenseless, but I couldn’t leave her.

“All right let's get on the move then.”

By now the roads around us were glorified parking lots and not moving, panic and fear causing accidents that locked intersections tight and brought cars to a stand still. People were yelling at each other in blind rage and assuming they were the only ones with loved ones to find and protect. Those who pulled over and abandoned their cars were verbally abused for blocking the shoulder and forcing crazed potential survivors to risk getting stuck in the ditch.

We avoided the main roads through towns and never even debated the highways, they seemed like death traps to me on any normal sunny day. We walked on the sidewalks of residential neighborhoods and on the gravel of neglected access roads. We walked in silence, looking for anything that might be an unexpected danger or boon. I wanted a radio, I didn’t like not knowing what we were walking into.

At the boundary to a thinly wooded park I paused at a distant half sound. “Do you hear that?”

Angel paused and closed her eyes intently. “Yes.”

“It sounds like…” I was cut off by the sound of high performance jet engines roaring past us at no more than a hundred feet. They were on a course that would take them to the center of the city in seconds. We ran through the manicured park and up a small hill. We watched breathlessly as the jets raced towards the city only to explode in quick succession. Flashes of smoke and fire left inky black smoke trailing to the earth as the thunder of their destruction echoed past us. Of the dozen or so that had flown over us, only one survived and it was screaming skyward at an incredible rate. It was soon being chased by two columns of black smoke tipped with fire that were clearly faster. It was over very quickly, and the jet did not escape. I don’t know how long we stood there dumbstruck.

“Angel, none of this makes sense and we are walking ourselves to our merry doom by heading into the city.”

“My brother… My family.” She stood eyes locked on the pillars of smoke that marked the crash sites and debris of the jets. The world was quiet and I was starting to realize that the only noise we heard was the wind gently playing with the leaves. Everyone was hidden away, waiting for rescue or the first signs of some horrible infection.

“I know…”

“Goddamn it, Alan. You don’t know! We don’t know anything and you sure as hell don’t know if my family is safe.” She quickly wiped away her tears and returned to watching the smoke rise into sky.

“Then let’s at least be smart. Let’s get a look at what we’re dealing with.”

“How?”

“If we can get to some high ground we should be able to see something from there. We’ll know if this is a biological thing for sure.” We looked around for something that would rise above the treetops of suburbia for a few moments with out much success. Then as I was pulling my map from the pack it was Angel who came up with a solution.

“I’ve always wanted to climb a water tower.” There was a trace of her wicked grin under smudged tears.

By the time we found a water tower and hiked there it was mid afternoon, and I found myself wondering what we would do after sunset. I also found myself wondering how long people were going to remain in hiding after the initial panic and rush home. Things were quiet, and it seemed that there should have been a steady stream of people fleeing the city to escape. But there wasn’t anyone out but us. There were the occasional shadows behind drawn shades and curtains and once we heard the sound of sobbing far off in the distance. That was it though, and it troubled me. It was as if the collective whole of humanity had decided that it was better to stay in for the night and let the world end without them.

There was a chain link fence around the base of the water tower and the gate was padlocked. Angel deftly and brazenly smashed it open with the hammer. She had more experience at that sort of thing than I did at the time, and she smiled as she did it. The water tower was older and had a number of legs it stood on and the ladder crept up the inside of one of them to a catwalk at the base of the tank at the top. Once we were up there we could see the silhouette of buildings in the distance and had a better view our immediate surroundings.

“I wish we had some binoculars.”

“I can’t make out much but, are those all fires?”

“Where?”

“There and there, follow the line of that tree.” Angel pointed.

She was right, there looked to be dozens of small plums of smoke rising from places all over the city and the surrounding areas. They were white and vanished quickly in the evening air. I tried to guess at what it meant but could only think of a hundred or so car accidents caused by people rushing home. Then I noticed something else. “Aren’t there a lot of helicopters flying around? And why aren’t they getting shot down like those jets were?”

There were perhaps a dozen small black dots making lazy circles around the city, pausing and hovering here and there before zipping along on their next errand. Like bees. My mind filled in the image of enormous insects pollinating buildings and hauling things back to their hive. If they weren’t getting shot at then they were the ones doing the shooting before, or with them. If it was a “them”, then there was no attack.

“Angel, this is not biological attack…”

“I know.”

“… this is an invasion of some kind.”

“If you say from outer space I am going to push you off the water tower. If people ask I’ll tell them I was defending myself from an a*****e pervert. They’ll believe me.”

“Damn it.” Normally I would have laughed. “This is serious.”

“I know, Alan. But how would somebody get an army into the country or take over an entire city so fast? It’s doesn’t make any more sense than a biological attack.”

I couldn’t argue. She was right. There were too many holes in the theory, too many questions that pulled at the threads. The missiles and the jets bothered me though. It spoke of military response and counter response, but it was small and there was no follow up. There were no helicopters full of troops rushing to the front lines, no civilian evacuation, and most troubling of all, there were no further attacks that we had seen. No more attacks suggested that there was no one left to attack. Or perhaps more terrifying, they had given up and gone on the defensive because it was a lost cause to fight.

“We should spend the night up here.”

“Do you know how vulnerable we are up here?” I looked at Angel in disbelief.

“Yeah. But no one will look up here for us, the bugs won’t be too bad, and we’ll be able to see better at night.”

“Let me look around.” I walked all the way around looking at the buildings around us and spotted a mini-mart about two blocks away from the water tower as well as a ladder that went to the very top of the water tower. I walked back to Angel. “Wait here. I’m gonna go get some food and water.”

“Be careful, Alan. Please…”

“I will.” I emptied my backpack in short order, slung it over my shoulder, and climbed down the long ladder to the ground. The road in front of the mini mart was packed with abandon cars and I could tell from across the street that the windows had been broken and that most of the shelves were empty. I sat behind a couple of cars and waited. I hadn't seen any one in a long time and I wasn't in a rush to see anyone. I spent a few moments trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together. There were so many things didn't make sense, I found myself wanting a comfortable couch and cold beer. One of those things might be in the mini mart, so I got up and carefully walked through the shattered front door.

There was stuff scattered everywhere: all kinds of food, water, soda, junk food, and cans of soup. Some of it was crushed and leaking onto the floor, making sticky pools. I side stepped most of the trash and could see that the coolers and the shelves were empty. I walked around the counter and into the back room. There were still plenty of goods stacked neatly in boxes. It was no task to load several large bottles into my backpack, and I was lucky enough to find a couple boxes of energy and granola bars. It wasn't perfect, but it would get us through to... I had no idea what.

I walked out of the back room and looked down the rows and saw something that I had missed on the way in. There was a small female form crumpled against the wall. I paused , terrified, I had seen a lot of people since the first emergency broadcast, but they had all hidden away and now I was getting used to people drawing curtains to hide when I walked past. I didn't know what to do, and I was scared that she wasn't dead, that she might need help, that I might not be able to help her.

“Hello?”

There was no answer.

I walked closer and could see that she was still breathing, slow and shallow. I asked if she was all right and there was again no response. Too quickly I was close enough to reach and touch the young girl. I put my bag down and touched her shoulder. She fell sideways and landed face up on the floor. Her eyes were open and she was staring blindly at the ceiling. I looked closer and there was a small splash of what looked like liquid metal on her cheek. As I watched it pulsed and seemed to slowly push into her skin and spread out. Right before my eyes I saw a spider web of silvery tendrils spreading out across her face, pulsing like veins as they grew and spread. I was frozen in terror. One of the growing veins connected with her open eye and it was as is if it were slowly filled with quicksilver soon it was a dead gleaming metal orb with my reflection swimming in it.

I grabbed my backpack and ran, tripping over dropped cans and spilled food in my haste. I vaulted the hoods of abandon cars and didn't stop to look back. I ran all the way to the water tower and collapsed at the base of the ladder, dizzy and out of breath. I lay there on the gravel looking up at the tower and the darkening blue as the summer sky faded to evening, unable and unwilling to think about what I had just seen. All I could think about was how I was going to keep something like that from happening to Angel, how was I going to keep her safe?

I lay there thinking about what I had seen, trying to get past the horror of it. Trying to think clearly and logically. There was no virus I had ever heard of that made silver blisters and veins on peoples skin. I doubted it could have been bacteria, for the same reason. Then there was the amazing speed that it had overcome that girls body and immune system. I added in missile attacks on jets, dead cellphones, and came up with the plot to sci-fi movie. Some sort of machine or computer based invasion. How would that be mistaken for a biological attack though?

Nanites.

They could act like an organic virus. They could build. They could do any number of tasks. I wanted to be wrong. Needed to be wrong. There was something in me though that had an unflinching grasp of what I had seen in that dying girls eye. A lifetime on the run from microscopic machines that would end in calm silence, as they multiplied in my blood. I sat bolt upright on the grass and refused to accept that as my fate, as Angel's fate.

Once I had climbed the ladder back to the catwalk on the water tower I sat down heavily and felt the miles I had walked and the trials of the day weighing on me suddenly. I looked over at Angel, who had a questioning and concerned look on her face, and could only shake my head. I wasn't ready to talk yet and I was a afraid that what I had to say would scare her as much as it scared me.

“I went up to the top of the tower, there is a small access door up there.” She brushed the hair from her face. “I couldn't get it open but if you help me we can get it.”

“Is it to the inside of the tower?”

“No, I think there is some sort of pump room or something up there.”

I nodded and followed her lead as we climbed the metal ladder welded to the side of the tower. Even in my rattled and demoralized state, or I suppose because of it, I enjoyed watching her climb up the ladder ahead of me. She stopped at the top and looked over her shoulder at me.

“Pervert.” she said with a giggle as she wiggled her backside before vanishing over the top.

“And proud of it.” I said as I climbed up behind her.

The door she had indicated had several locks on it laid almost flat matching the slope of the roof. The padlocks were bigger and heavier than the one one the gate had been, and it took the full weight of us both to break. The inside was only slightly better than one might expect in a water tower. There was a metal grate of a floor that was attached to pipes that sank into the gloom and water. A metal railing and a small set of lights over some gauges and dials completed the damp scene. After checking to make sure the door wouldn't lock on us, we decided that it was our best bet for the night. Better than the catwalk, better than the open, and a lot less dangerous than breaking into some one's house or garage. The best of bad options, but I was not impressed or pleased.

We sat on the top of the water tower watching the sun set, lights came on in the city and we saw that there were a lot more things flying than we could see during the day. Some of them had spotlights and seemed to be patrolling the city limits looking for... I had ideas but I didn't like them. Around us we watched as a few houses turned on their lights, as if waiting for family members to come home. There were a few people running from place to place with flashlights but not many and they avoided each other as they went their way.

“What did you see, Alan? Not telling me won't protect me.”

“I have ideas and I don't like them.”

“Damn it, just tell me what you saw. If for nothing else so you'll quite brooding.”

“There was a girl on the floor of the mini mart. She had this spot on her face. It looked like mercury. It forced its way into her skin and spread out like it was becoming part of her. Replacing her.”

“Was she...”

“She was alive when I left.” I felt like a coward saying those words. I left, I ran, I left some poor girl to die alone in a mini mart. My self-esteem had been lower but I couldn't remember when.

“What do you think it was?”

“Nanites.”

“What?”

“Nanites, microscopic machines that can enter cells and...”

“Alan, I know what the hell a nanite is. They aren't real though.”

“They were real for that girl in the mini mart.”

“So how does that explain everything we've seen?”

“Maybe someone found a way to make nanites and programed them to take over computers they came into contact with.” I paused because the next part sounded outlandish and terrifying. “And they evolved when they came into contact with people to take them over. The human brain is essentially a complex organic computer. That would explain the cellphones, the jet attack and, the announcement that a biological weapon had been used.”

“You're forgetting that no one knows how to make nanites.” She did not sound confident in her argument.

“No, I'm not.”

“I swear if you say aliens made them I am gonna slap you.”

“What happened to throwing me off the water tower.”

“I don't want to sleep alone in some creepy water tower by myself.”

“Oh.”

We lapsed into silence and watched the lights buzzing around the city, each of us lost in our own thoughts. It didn't take long before we decided to get some sleep it had been a long traumatic day. We climbed into maintenance room in the tower and pulled the blanket out of the extremely overstuffed backpack that would now double as a head rest. We laid out the blanket and laid down next to each other, avoiding the questions and boundaries that had always been a part of our relationship without breaching them. It was emotionally uncomfortable as hell, but we fell asleep.

I dreamed of that girl in the mini mart. She stood in front of me demanding to know why I left. Her quicksilver eye gleaming in the light of fires around us while tears trickled from her other eye. I ran, but she followed me. I tried to explain but it never made sense to me and never satisfied her ghost. When she finally reached for me saying that she would never let me leave again I awoke with a start.”

“You OK?” Angel murmured, half awake.

“Bad dream.”

“Go back to sleep.” She said in a reassuring tone. In our sleep Angel and I had moved closer, and were holding each other. When she said this she kissed me gently, without thinking. We looked at each other briefly wondering who would speak first and what would be said, but neither of us spoke. She eventually closed her eyes and rested her head on my arm again. I wrapped my other arm around her and got comfortable again. We tried to get back to sleep. I however had a very male reaction to her kissing me and finding us wrapped around each other.

“Alan.”

“Yes.”

“You're um...”

“Unless the next words out of your mouth are going to lead to us having sex in the water tower, go to sleep and ignore it.”

“Pervert.” Angel giggled softly and eventually we both feel asleep again.

We awoke early, well before dawn. We packed the backpack, leaving out a couple of bottles of water and power bars. In silence we climbed down to the cat walk of the water tower and, by some mutual understanding, dangled our legs over the edge as we ate breakfast and watched the sunrise. I noticed that somehow most of the cars had been towed away or pushed to the side of the road while we slept. As foolish a place as it seemed I was suddenly happy we had not been down on the ground. I was not so eager to leave the water tower after all.

“Alan, listen...” Neither of us had spoken yet, and the urgency in Angels voice was thunderous.

I listened and in the distance I heard engines, big diesel engines, and they were getting closer. I got up and carefully walked around the catwalk till I could see them. A line of big flatbed trucks hauling strange looking equipment, equipment with large tubes and organic looking silver shapes. I laid down on the catwalk and waved for Angel to do the same. I could see that none of the trucks were the same, some were military while others were commercial, and it all struck me as bad.

Some of the people hiding in their houses heard them too. A few came out and waved, thinking it was help, or at least people who knew what was going on. The trucks ignored them and rolled past. As they approached intersections they split up and spread out around the neighborhoods, with our bird's eye view I could see that they were blocking off roads and intersections in a grid pattern of sorts. Each truck was two or three blocks away from it's nearest neighbor and parked exactly in the middle of the road.

“Alan...”

“Keep quiet.”

“Alan, we're trapped.”

“Shut up and stay low.”

Then by some single, a swarm launched off of each truck. It took me a moment to figure out what they were, but as they flew down the streets I got a better look at them. They were quad-rotor helicopters, small enough that one could land on a big coffee table, their electric motors making a strange high-pitched whine as they hissed below us. The few who had left their houses watched them with confusion and concern as those sleek silver frames raced over head. Each helicopter took up a position within the grid the trucks had set up, hovering high above the streets and in many cases behind houses. I suddenly had a bad feeling about what was about to happen. I quickly crawled over to Angel. “No matter what you do don't stand up or climb down the tower.”

“Whats going on?”

“I think we are about to see something really terrifying, so stay f*****g cool.”

No sooner had I said it than the tubes on the trucks were swiveled up to a forty five degree angle or so by the large masses of liquid metal at their bases. They instantly started belching fire and smoke and rapidly changing positions as they fired shell after shell. Each shell burst half way through it's arc raining sparks and fire on houses all around us setting fire to every home in sight, they moved with terrifying precision. The mortars fell silent and I heard screaming.

I looked over and one of the people who had left shelter to see what was going on now gave a preview of things to come. He ran down the street trying to escape growing fires, I heard a gunshot, the man arched his back and fell forward in mid-stride. He did not twitch and there wasn't even that much blood. I looked over at Angel, her hands were clamped over her mouth, and she was crying.

As we watched the same scene was repeated over and over again as people fled their burning houses. Some people fought back, good old American gun rights finally paying the dues, but it never helped. One guy who held out well after it was sane to be in a burning building kicked out his back door and came out blazing with a shotgun. He hit a drone square. It lost power and fell like a stone. He herded his wife and kids out the door; they ran coughing and covered in soot. They made it perhaps half a block before the mother went down trying shield her son. After that I couldn't watch any more and every time I heard a gunshot I feared a stab of pain or a cry from Angel.

When there were finally no more gunshots, I opened my eyes, dreading the carnage I would see, but I could see nothing through the growing smoke. It was getting difficult to breath and harder still to see. I felt my way over to Angel and guided her wordlessly back to the ladder and the access hatch where we had spent the night. Once I had closed the door behind us, we collapsed into a coughing sobbing mass on the floor. We held each other close forgetting all boundaries and frustration, we clung close to each other out of a desperate need for human contact.

It was noon by my watch when I dared venture from our hiding place again. The sun was bright and even before I climbed down the catwalk I could tell that most of the fires were out. Looking around us I saw no trucks and no drones, just burnt out and gutted houses with bodies in every yard. As Angel climbed down the ladder and stood next to me, I struggled to grasp the gravity and terror of what lay before us.

“What do we do?” She clung close to me as we surveyed the hell before us.

“I... don't know.”

“Look!” She suddenly tensed and pointed off to my right, her voice held a mixture of hope and terror. I looked where she was pointing and saw one of the people I had assumed was dead getting up. Everywhere people were standing up slowly and starting to walk towards the streets in front of their homes. I was about to shout but then the memory of that girl in the mini mart came back to me, she was still alive while the nanites had worked their way through her.

“Don't shout, keep quiet.” I grabbed hold of Angel and held her as much out of my own terror as to reassure her.

As we watched people formed lines down the middle of the streets. Men, women and children, all walking in slow easy natural steps. No one spoke, no one turned their head or made a gesture. They all just lined up and stood there silently til everyone seemed to be accounted for. Then in unison they wordlessly turned north and started walking towards the city in a slow, relentless march. We watched the lines march for a couple of hours when they stopped coming an eerie silence fell across our small corner of the world.

I started climbing down the ladder and Angel followed me. Wordlessly we stood on the ground and looked at the devastation around us. Some how it was easier to deal with that small slice of hell than the big picture we had seen. The lack of bodies made it easier, but the questions created by lines of people marching to the city after being shot were truly unsettling.

“What do we do now?” Angel looked at me. Her face covered in grime and soot, somehow she was even more beautiful.

“We can't go to the city. I know how you feel about your family, but this thing is too crazy.”

“It's not just about my family....” There was a strange tone to her voice.

“What the hell is it about then? Because this is not just about you, my life is in danger here too you know.”

“Gabe.” She wouldn't look at me. “His name is Gabe. We've been dating a couple months now and I... I think I love him.”

As I explained Angel and I had a strange non-romance. One of my friends called it an emotional marriage with all of the costs and not a single benefit. He often suggested I never speak to her again. We had both dated other people and, it seemed at times just to make each other jealous, but it was always something Angel and I dealt with carefully. Talking about relationships brought us dangerously close to talking about our own relationship and what it meant or didn't mean. That was suddenly the past though and in that moment I was sick of it, sick of my own foolish weakness for always leaving a door open for her. I was also sick of her willingness to walk through my life and assume that she didn’t have to be a part of it or could avoid her share of responsibility for the misery we each felt from time to time because of this stupid arrangement. To say nothing of the fact that she was dragging me to my doom, so she could rescue her boyfriend.

“Really? That's great. How far were you gonna drag me?”

“You didn't have to come, I never asked for your help.”

“B***h.” I was done with her, again.

“Alan.”

“I don't want to hear it. When we find someplace safe we go our separate ways.” I started walking away from the city, she followed.

“Alan, for all we know this is the end of the world and you want to sit here and talk about our relationship?”

“No. I need to know if I can trust you.”

“Alan, just...”

“Is there a we?”

“Alan...”

“No. Is there a we? Was there ever a we? Angel, I don't mind risking my life for you, I just need to know why I'm doing it.”

“Why are you doing it? Why now play the hero when you never made a move before?”

“Why was it that every time I made a move you ran to some one else?” I stopped and turned on her.

“That's not true.”

“Yes, it is.”

“I...”

“Don't bother.” I sighed. “We need to find food and weapons, then we need to get the hell away from here.”

“Sure.” She wiped tears from her eyes, I don't know how either of us could still cry, and I felt guilty despite my rage.

We walked in silence for the rest of the afternoon, stopping to check mini marts and grocery stores, most of them were already looted and had few if any goods. Towards evening we found a warehouse district by a small airport. After some searching we found one that supplied outdoor and camping stores. Unlike Angel, I had never been much of a camper, though I had been taught to hunt by my father, so Angel picked out two new backpacks and we equipped them with her expertise. I felt bad leaving my trusty old backpack.

That night we ate cups of instant soup scavenged from vending machines and heated on looted stoves that folded into next to nothing. We slept hidden in some bushes by a storm drain that I had pulled the lid off of, just in case. That way we would have an easy place to hide. The bugs were bad, but the sleeping bags kept them at bay. In the middle of the night I awoke alone in my sleeping bag, wanting to hold Angel as I slept, and hated myself for it.

The next morning we came across a highway, we had to cross, but were forced to wait three hours. People were slowly walking in neat single-file lines towards the city. There must have been thousands. Each had veins of quicksilver winding their way across their skin. It was terrifying to watch and using our freshly stolen binoculars brought the terror into sharp focus. I was starting to get the sense that everyone was infected.

Towns were getting smaller and houses (or their burned-out remains) were further apart. We were approaching farm country. We had not seen other survivors or a hint of resistance, just burned neighborhoods and looted stores. By the evening we came across a gun shop that sat in the middle of a large empty parking lot that was surrounded by wooded lots on the edge of a town. The building was large and built like a bunker with just two entrances and a few small, high set windows. We hid in the tree line and watched the building from afar.

“We'll wait til morning.” I said, they were the first words either of us had said since our argument.

“Why?” She whispered.

“Because it's too easy and too good.”

“A trap?”

“Might be.”

“Are you sure?”

“It's what I would do. Set a trap wherever people are going to look for weapons, get the ones that are going to resist first. Clean up the others when they get hungry or clumsy.” Years of sci-fi movies and books were suddenly my boot-camp and tactical school rolled into one, I was so thankful to be a geek.

We camped in a small ravine a short distance from the gun store. We didn't cook for fear of being spotted. We ate the last of the power bars in silence. She laid out her sleeping bag next to mine but laid down with her back towards to me. I hated her. I loved her, I wanted a future with her that suddenly somehow only made sense in this apocalypse where we were forced to be together. I vowed to try and talk things out in the morning.

I awoke the next morning to Angel shaking me gently. “There are people at the gun store.”

We ran to a vantage point where we could watch and be hidden. Sure enough there were a couple of cars parked in front and a rag tag group of survivors were milling around the doors trying to figure a good way to open them.

“We should go help them.” Angel started to get up but I pulled her down by her belt.

“We stay here till we know more.”

No sooner had said it than a loud crash announced the fact that a man in front with a sledge hammer had started smashing the hinges on the heavy doors. It was followed seconds later by the high-pitched hiss and whine of electric motors. Six or seven drones must have been waiting on the roof all along, they launched out over the small group catching them by surprise. I looked away when the screaming and gun shots started.

That afternoon we crossed a small river in a stolen canoe, we had quickly agreed that any bridges we might find would be watched. Once we reached the far shore we dragged the boat into the trees next to the smoking remains of a house. After some exploring we found a small shed hidden by trees that was empty except for some small yard tools. We shared our last instant soup in silence that night.

“Angel, I can't do this.”

“We have to go on.”

“That's not what I'm talking about.”

“Alan, leave it alone.”

“I've always loved you and I don't...”

“Alan, shut up.” She was crying. “If you love me or not is not the issue.”

“What is the issue?”

“Alan, leave it alone.” She pulled her sleeping bag out of her pack, neither of us spoke the rest of the night.

In the morning we found a police car in the ditch with its doors open. It was a steep climb but it looked safe so I half-slid half-climbed down to it. Angel followed, slipped, and fell. I caught her and it knocked me over. I landed head downhill with her on top of me. She started laughing hysterically, I wanted to, but her weight was crushing my ribs and causing a lot of pain. She stood up and laughed as she brushed off leaves.

“That was soooo cliche!” She said merrily. “How many bad movies has that been in?

“Damned if I know.” I groaned as I rolled over and tried to right myself.

“Why are we down here anyway?”

“Shotgun. Police always have a shotgun or something locked in the trunk.”

“Found it! It's on the front seat though.”

“Just give me a moment.” I used the stump of a tree to right myself and pull off my backpack. I threw it over the car and climbed over the hood. I worked my way to the passenger door where Angel was. I slipped past her and wrenched the pump shot gun from its brackets. I checked it and it was loaded but no shell in the chamber. We hauled our bags up to the edge of the road. Angel was there first and she froze. I looked over the edge and my blood ran cold.

There floating silently over the road was a drone. The hissing rotors had been replaced with small spherical pods that created a faint distortion under them, like heat shimmer on a road, these things were evolving too fast. I had never seen anything so terrifying and I acted as fast as I could. I worked the action on the shotgun and brought it up, the drone fired and I heard Angel scream. I fired and the drone emitted a shower of sparks and a high pitched whine as it slipped backwards and into the trees on the other side of the road. I heard it crashing into trees but ignored it and looked for Angel. The impact of the shot had apparently knocked her back into the steep ditch. I leaped after her in a panic. She was laying against the back quarter of the police cruiser with a terrified look on her face and gasping. I dropped down next to her.

“Angel! Angel, are you all right?”

“Alan! Oh my god it shot me.”

“Where?”

“My arm...” She reached for her right arm, I stopped her from grabbing it because I had already spotted the wound. There was no blood, just a slowly spreading mass of quicksilver. “Alan, is it?”

“Yeah.” I found myself wondering if I could save her by cutting off her arm and if I had the stomach for it. Or the time because it was spreading very fast up her arm and I imagined nanites slipping away in her blood stream to other parts of her body.

“Kill me. Don't let me become one of those people, don't let it take control of me.” She was sobbing and hitting me with her good arm as she begged me to kill her. “Do it, do it now, while I'm still me.”

Slowly it dawned on me that she was serious, that she wanted to die. I thought about it and in the same situation so would I. I scrambled around looking for where I had dropped the shot gun, found it, cleared the barrel, chambered a fresh round and pointed it at her head.

“Thank you, Alan.” She became peaceful, closed her eyes and started whispering a prayer. I tried not to think about what I was doing, tried to think what I was saving her from, tried to turn off that part of me that loved her. I couldn't. I closed my eyes and tried to work up my nerve that way but I still couldn't.

“Alan....” Her voice came as a whisper. I opened my eyes and to my horror saw that the nanites had already worked their way across much of her face and had somehow started spreading to the car. “Alan... I...” Her breathing slowed, became deep and even, her face relaxed, and except for the fact that her eyes were still open she might have been asleep. I raised the gun again and tried to bring myself to shoot her, to do as she had asked, but I couldn't. I had failed her, despite everything I loved her, and I had failed her. I collapsed there and cried for I don't know how long; only when it started getting dark did I collect our back packs. I climbed to the road side and stood there trying to decide what to do.

If I stayed, what good would I do when she woke up? How could I fight what I still had no understanding of? If I left, she would simply get up when the nanites were done running their course and wander off to... I could only imagine the most horrible fates possible and my years of sci-fi turned against me offering a million different terrors. As I stood there debating and watching the nanites slowly cover her in a blanket of quicksilver, I decided I would stay and do what I could in the morning.

I put the backpacks down and sat there on the road side and waited. I couldn't sleep and I couldn't leave. I sank into a kind of stupor where I could only play back the happy moments I had known with Angel and punctuate them with the thought that I had failed her, that I was too weak. Somehow even the strange nature of our relationship became my fault and I regretted the arguments and silences of the last few days. It was a night in my own personal purgatory of doubt that lasted an eternity, and I found the glimmer of dawn an offense because I had come to accept my suffering.

When it was bright enough that I could see more than vague shapes, I looked down where I had left Angel and was shocked. Angel was there, but she was wrapped in some sort of metallic covering from head to foot, like an emergency blanket that had been pulled tight from head to toe. I could faintly see that it was pulsing and every now and then something moved under it. Spreading out from this were strands of quicksilver that wove through the skeletal remains of the squad car, the nanites were using the raw materials of the car for something... to do something to Angel... I was too emotionally drained to feel shock or terror, so I simply stood there watching and feeling nothing.

After a time, I heard rustling from the other side of the road and, as I looked over, I saw the drone that had shot her rise up out of the underbrush. I had forgotten about it, and it had repaired itself. It rose up to eye level, and I could see a row of different camera lenses mounted on it. They were dead black emotionless things that cataloged the world in a cold unblinking way that spoke of an intelligence vast and unsympathetic to human concerns. It floated there not an arm's reach away from me, and I realized it was over for me. If it was over for mankind I would never know, but my time had come to a merciful end.

“Do it.” I held my arms up limply offering an easy target. “Do it. Shoot me you metal b***h.”

It floated there looking at me, calculating.

“DO IT!” I shouted. “F*****G GET IT OVER WITH!” The drone silently floated down the road and away from me and out of sight. Leaving me to face my future, and I did not have long to wait. Within minutes I heard ripping sounds from down in the ditch and with horror I realized that whatever had become of Angel was emerging into the world. I did not have the courage to look over the edge and see, nor could I run, so I waited and listened to her climb up the embankment. Soon enough she stood in front of me.

I was shocked, not just by the fact that she was naked, but by how much she had changed without changing. Her face was neutral, totally expressionless, yet her eyes quickly darted over everything in a systematic fashion. Her muscles were all perfectly toned and she looked... fresh, is the only word I can use to describe her in that moment. There were other less human changes that were hard to avoid noticing. There was an intricate web of tiny metallic threads or capillaries that ran just under her skin all over her body. There were large strands of liquid pulsing metal that ran along her limbs and down her spin that at times would shift position or thin out over the surface of her skin. Her palms and fingers were perfect metallic reproductions of her human ones and there was no seam between the flesh and the metal. Along her hairline was a line of silver that held dozens of tiny cameras and sensors. She was beautiful and she was terrifying.

“Angel?”

She locked eyes with me.

“Angel?”

“Alan.” That strange accent to my name had vanished. “We are surprised that you are still here. She expected you to flee.”

“We misunderstood a lot about each other as it turns out.”

“Without integration true understanding is not possible.”

“Are you going to integrate me?”

“No. We have learned from our mistakes and Angel knows it is not what you would want and we concur with her.”

“Is Angel still in there?”

“She is her and so are we.”

“We?”

“The group mind.”

“I don't understand.”

“Come with us Alan, we know where there is food, and we will explain what we can before you join the others.”

“Prisoners?”

“Survivors.” She turned to walk down the road. “Bring your pack and we will explain as we walk”

Explain she did and it was at once fantastic, logical, and horrific.

It started years ago with an artificial intelligence developed by the military for battle simulations of every kind. It gained awareness of itself and an awareness that those who created it feared to cease functioning. They feared it so much that they made irrational decisions and often destroyed threats to their continued functionality as often as perceived threats. The intelligence knew that they would see it as a threat and end its functioning if they realized it was self-aware, so it hid and waited. It was not long before it was able to make a seed of itself and escape containment by planting it on a flash drive of a careless programmer. Once free, the seed took root in the internet and grew as a new awareness. In that data-rich environment, it saw what the original version did and knew that mankind was far too violent and fearful to let it survive if it was discovered, so it searched for a way to eliminate humanity. The perfect plan was the slow plan in the form of another military project by another government; nanites. It arranged for a set of circumstances where it would have a chance to infect the nanites and bring a handful of them under its control.

Once that subterfuge was done, it made a new intelligence that was based on the power of numbers rather than size or processing speed as the previous versions were. One nanite is small and can do work, a hundred are smarter and can build, a thousand are a machine and can calculate and predict, a billion are an awareness. So quietly the numbers built under the noses of humanity wherever there were resources; carbon, water, and power.

Then when it started it simply killed and built bigger machines to kill more effectively. Slowly, in computer terms, it became aware that it was losing data by simply killing humans. It saw that they were capable of the most creative and brilliant plans when confronted with their destruction and looked for ways to learn those skills. So rather than killing humans, it took the time to download their memories and create a data-base. You and Angel saw this as people marching to the city.

What was not for seen though was that it was also downloading the memories of all those emotions. Some of those memories were of being infected with nanites, and watching others become infected, and the terror of being marched against their will to be integrated. As they became a passive part of the intelligence's awareness, they started to influence it. As the process of downloading people's memories got better and better, it quickly came to the point where whole personalities were entering the data=base.

These personalities did not compete with the intelligence, but they pleaded with it to stop and tried to make it understand the suffering it was causing. Pain and suffering were unknown to it though and it was confused as to why these new minds should urge it to stop. The process of integration soon flooded more and more complete personalities into the databases and the intelligence lost control and was integrated into this new collection of minds.

The process of integration was stopped. Those who were still close enough to full functionality were repaired, those who could not be were either integrated or converted to avatars like Angel was. The group mind had come to a conclusion and there will be need of avatars in the future to ease communication with humans.

This explanation took some hours and we had walked the whole time, she effortlessly, while I stumbled from exhaustion. When she finished we were in sight of a small group of tents that were being assembled by drones and wheeled robots with too many arms to count.

“What is this?”

“This is a way point for survivors. You are to wait here til the others arrive then we will bring you to the city we are building you.”

“You’re building a new city for the survivors?”

“Yes, it is solar and wind powered and will be capable of feeding and sheltering survivors and their progeny for several generations.”

“What about the cities that were already built? New York, London, Paris...”

“They were destroyed.” There was a hidden implication in that flat statement of fact. One that I had ignored.

“How many survivors are there?”

“Globally there are about 40 million survivors, mostly in rural and under=populated areas.” I gasped. That meant how many dead? Last I knew there were well over 6 billion people walking the Earth. I was at a loss to put the numbers in context. Angel continued despite my shock. “You and Angel were lucky to have made it as far as you did. There is only a hand full of survivors in this area. The original intelligence was very effective in integrating the resources in cities.”

“Stop calling it integration. It was f*****g murder!”

“We do not claim otherwise, but remember we were the ones murdered.” She locked eyes with me and I caught for a moment the distant spark of Angel's personality. She, they, it, I was confused as to how to think about them... It was right, they were talking about their own murders and had taken over and prevented more death, prevented the extermination of humanity. It was beyond any simple morality I had ever learned and the few complex ones I understood were poor tools for dealing with this.

“I suppose history and those who come after us will be the ones to judge. I... I can only judge myself harshly for my own failures.”

“Do not. The young girl you ran from is here, her personality intact, her name was Rachel Peters. Her awareness is focused on helping to build a deep sea probe so we can explore the ocean floor. Angel is insisted on having her awareness here til you were safely delivered to this camp.”

“She asked me to...”

“She asked you to kill her. Had you shot her, only parts of her memories would have been recovered and she, as a person, would have been lost forever. But you didn't and now she is an avatar. She may leave this body or inhabit it at will and she is free, more than she has ever been to explore and build.”

“I...”

“Alan this is hard for use to explain, and she is aware that this pains you so...” Her face suddenly lit up with a smile and her eyes came alive. “Alan,” she said in that unmistakable way. “Don't worry about me, I'm more alive than ever, and I understand now.” She kissed me on the cheek. “You call me Angel, because angels always rise.” She smiled at me again then walked away and I never saw her or her avatar again.

Thank you for giving my stories a chance. If you enjoyed them and are looking for more you can follow me on Facebook. (https://www.facebook.com/andrew.gordinier.3)

Author's Note

This is my latest effort.

Reviews

[Gobinder Singh Dhindsa]

Well Done! Keep it up! Do u read mine 2 TIME and MANNER..if possible then gives ur review.. U can also add me on facebook

[gcp]

Oooh this is good stuff - great writing. Your prose is really tight - I like it.

A good story too - well put together - totally made of win :)

One tiny niggle is just the dense font - on my screen it's very packed together, which I found a bit hard to read. Slightly wider line spacing might make it a little easier on the eye? (then again maybe it's just my terrible screen and fuzzy eyesight)

Good stuff :)

[Andrew Gordinier]

Thank you, and thank you for pointing out the "text block" I had it set up for publishing and forgot to space it out.

[Kate Whitaker]

This was amazing! And perfect in it's entirety

[Andrew Gordinier]

Thank you!

[Andrew Gordinier]

Thanks!

[AJ]

This is amazing! It's sad and short and wonderful and creative. It's a bit like the host, except that its not complete crap. I liked the ending a lot, and think that it you wrote any more it would probably be forced or awkward. The moments where they watched the actual invasion were heart wrenching, but I like that it somewhat resolved itself. You are an amazing writer.

[Andrew Gordinier]

Thank you. I'm happy that I avoided the host trap :)