Apocalypse game, p.34
Apocalypse Game, page 34
Adeline and Finn went back and forth on that topic for a while longer, but I tuned them out and watched the scenery go by. It was peaceful out here, almost like the apocalypse wasn’t going on at all.
I wonder if there are parts of the country untouched by all this madness. Maybe a few, perhaps. But I quickly shut down that line of thought. Even if there are sections of the world where life is normal, I can’t be a part of that. There’s too much at stake for me to give up now. All the blood on my hands will mean nothing if I just pack it in.
I’d made my choice, accepted my role, and I couldn’t waver in that.
Even if internally I was struggling to come to terms with that.
I was left with my thoughts as the miles wore on and the day dwindled into night.
When it became too dark to continue driving without headlights, we stopped for the day. We got off the interstate as soon as possible and found the first unoccupied house that looked moderately defensible.
It was a charming white colonial two-story with faux marble pillars and a bay window on the second story. Finn parked the Humvee around the side, and we all got out to check on things. After sitting for so long, I was relieved to be able to stretch my limbs.
I walked a few feet around to the front of the house and peered into one of the windows. Empty. There weren’t any signs of life in the house. Finn and Ade had their guns out, looking around, and Salvatore’s fingers twitched next to his pistol.
I stepped up onto the porch, which creaked as I put my weight on it and caused everyone to turn. They relaxed when their lights shone on me, but a ruffle of cloth made them tense again.
“You can relax. There’s no one here,” Death said with a smile as she leaned back in one of the chairs on the porch.
Finn and Ade jumped at her voice but calmed themselves when they realized who it was, but this was the first time Salvatore was meeting Death, and he understandably freaked out about a sudden new voice. He knelt, drew both pistols, and bared down on her.
“Killian, move!”
“Calm down, Sal. She’s a friend.”
“Sal?” he asked after deliberating on whether he should lower his weapons. After some brief thought, he did and stood.
I shrugged. “Your name is long, and everyone here has a nickname. It seems only fitting you do too.”
Salvatore chuckled and thrust his chin at Death. “So, who is she?”
“Ah, how rude of me,” Death said and stood from the chair in a single smooth motion, almost gliding over to stand beside me. She bowed her head and curtsied. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. My name is Death.”
Salvatore just stared at her with a neutral expression for a moment before smiling. "Scary lady, indeed.” He inclined his head to her. “A pleasure, Lady Death, may your souls always find their way back home.”
Death beamed and nudged me with her elbow. “At least someone in your party can show proper respect.”
I snorted. “Well, after using the Incarnation of Death as a body pillow, it seems the whole deferential awe thing kind of went out the window.”
She laughed and leaned on me, winding her arm through mine. “That’s a fair point.” She giggled and turned to the others. “I’ve already claimed the master bedroom upstairs, but there’s plenty of room for everyone.”
The others laughed, and Adeline stepped forward. “Well, let’s go check out our new digs.”
As we stepped inside, a notification appeared in front of us.
Assign 864 Holland St. as [Temporary Home]
Cost: 10 Coins
Y/N
Yes.
864 Holland St.
Fortification Level: 8
Newburn City Threat Level: 5
Safe Zone: Active
I had the money to spare, so I gladly dropped the coins for a safe zone and the Well-Rested buff.
The others fanned out with their guns drawn, even with the safe zone and Death’s assurances. I trusted her and didn’t bother to sweep the house, but Finn and Salvatore did while Ade looked around and picked her bedroom.
I was stiff and tired from the drive and just wanted a hot shower and to sleep, to forget this day had ever happened. I left the others to their own devices as Death and I found the master bedroom.
It was decorated with modern furniture that was supposed to look like antiques, but I could tell it wasn’t. The bed was a king with a soft white comforter and nearly a dozen pillows arranged in an organized line. There was also a door that led to the attached balcony, but I didn’t even bother. Instead, I dropped my gear and headed straight for the bathroom.
It was huge, easily the size of my old room, and where the bedroom tried to aim for old-world grand elegance, the bathroom was all high-end modern appliances and a shower-bathtub combination that looked like it could fit four people and still have room for more.
I knelt by the side of the tub and turned the water on. Instantly, there was hot water without even needing to warm up first. I also noticed small black circles spaced out around the tub.
Water jets? Interesting.
I was eager to relax for a moment and stripped before quickly climbing in.
The water wasn’t scalding, but it was close, and I sighed in bliss. The faucet also poured a metric ton of water every second, and the tub filled in under a minute with steaming water. I dunked my head under and brushed my waterlogged hair out of my face before sitting back.
“Can I join you?” Death asked from the doorway.
After everything that had happened, my reticence for keeping her at arm’s length was rapidly crumbling, and I nodded before I realized what I was doing.
She stepped forward and slipped off her dress before bending down and removing her panties, leaving them in a pile next to my clothes. Death unabashedly let me drink her in as she sauntered forward and stepped into the bath.
The water came up to her shoulders as she leaned back into my chest and pulled my arms around her waist. Death used the crook of my neck as a pillow and sighed with contentment as the hot water rushed over her.
“So, tell me what happened?” she asked. “Death clings to you like a shroud.”
I sighed and opened my mouth, bearing the whole truth to her and leaving nothing out because I knew she wouldn’t condemn me for what I did. There wasn’t a single second of judgment in her eyes. She turned back around and leaned against me.
“You did what you had to, but you know that. You don’t need to seek absolution from me to know that what you did in your heart was just.”
“That’s the problem. I’ve accepted it, and I don’t regret the lives I took.” I shook my head, recalling the twisted satisfaction I’d felt when ending Reynolds’s life. Some part of me had enjoyed his death. And that was the problem. “I’ve already started down a dangerous path. And it’s one I can’t come back from.”
Death shifted, twisting around to kneel between my legs. She held my cheek in her palm. “I think you are under the delusion that people are either good or they’re evil. That has never been true for a single human since your race crawled up from primordial chaos. Humans will do good, and they will do evil. It’s in your nature. You can’t control it. But as long as your good outweighs your evil, I think you can consider yourself a good person.”
“But doesn’t being a good person matter? Isn’t that what I should be striving for?”
She shrugged. “If that is how you wish to live your life, then yes. But I think that you’re worrying about the wrong things. You may commit immoral actions, but you could never be evil. It isn’t who you are.”
“Isn’t who I am? You say that like you know me.” I chuckled, but it was cold and bitter. “How could you possibly know me when I don’t even know myself?
“After everything that’s happened to me? The more I think about it, the more I realize that I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what I stand for. What I believe in. I thought I knew, once. I thought I stood for something, but all I’ve done since I accepted the mantle and stepped out into this world is prove everything I thought I knew wrong.
“I’m a liar. A thief. A killer.” I scoffed. “I’m the Demon Lord. That’s all that Killian Dunn amounts to anymore. An unwanted title. And a goal that isn’t mine.”
Death shook her head and stood. As water sluiced off her ashen skin, she smiled, and her silver eyes glistened. “Then allow me to show you who you are. Who you’ve always been.”
There was a lingering ache in my chest, and as her eyes held me, I couldn’t look away. I took her hand as she pulled me up and led me out of the bath.
We both disregarded the fact that we were naked and dripping water as we climbed into bed. Her hands wrapped around me and held me. Death pulled me close and moved slowly, her breathing labored as she laid my head on her chest.
“Let me show you the Killian you’ve forgotten. The man I fell in love with. Let me give you back a piece of your life that I stole away. Let me make you whole again.”
“I thought you didn’t want me to know?”
She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter what I wanted. You were right.” She smiled. “You usually are. It is your life, your memories. And I can’t treat you like a plaything, not when you mean everything to me.”
Her hand went to my temple, and an indescribable rush fell over me. It was as if my mind had been full of holes, and Death poured hot water into my head to plug them. Warmth spread through me, and my head pounded as everything came back to me all at once.
It was so much.
Too much.
Way too much.
Years of memories and dreams came back to me instantly, and I couldn’t comprehend them. But as I opened my eyes and winced even in the dim light that spilled in from the bathroom, I knew one immutable fact.
As I stared into Death’s eyes, I knew I loved her. I knew it as surely as I knew how to breathe.
I’d just forgotten for a time.
But as the influx of information continued, my mind buckled under the strain and then went blank. I didn’t fall asleep, but I wasn't awake either. It was some dissociative fugue state between the two.
Death wasn’t next to me, but her warmth was, and her phantom touch squeezed my hand. Her voice filled my head and soothed my chaotic thoughts.
“Easy, darling. I’m sorry. So many memories and experiences at once were too much for you. Let’s start slowly and go through them one at a time.”
Slowly, a light blossomed in front of me and gradually brightened the room. I was viewing it as a spectator, and it was incredibly strange because I was looking at myself when I was younger.
My hair was quite lighter instead of my now nearly black brown. My eyes were also a startling sapphire, so much sharper than the pale blue they were now. It was surreal to see myself as a child of no more than four or five.
“This is one of my favorites,” Death said from behind me. “It’s the night we met.”
I was lying on the floor of our house. The furniture and layout were different from how it was now, but it was the same house I grew up in. Except everything was through the eyes of a child. The furniture was comically large and the colors too bright. I was playing with some toys when a stranger walked in the front door.
It was Death, but she was different. She was much older than the girl I’d come to know, mid-thirties or so. Her hair was also much longer, a soft blonde that was tied back in a ponytail. She wore a black button-up with the sleeves rolled up and a pair of dark wash jeans with biker boots.
Death looked around in confusion for a second and muttered under her breath. ”Right house, wrong person.”
She turned to leave, but child me noticed her and called out.
”Pretty,” younger me said.
Death stopped, turning to smile at me. ”Why, thank you.” Her smile deepened. “What’s your name?”
”I’m Killian,” he said, but he pronounced it Kiwwian.
I laughed. ”I had the hardest time with l’s.”
Death knelt with a wide grin. ”It’s nice to meet you, Killian.”
Before she could stand back up, younger me reached out and grabbed her hair and stared at it like it was the most amazing thing in the world.
”Pretty,” he repeated.
”What’s your favorite color?” she asked.
Young me stopped and pondered that like she’d asked who killed Kennedy. After a few seconds of thought, he shouted. “Purple!”
Death’s hair changed then, darkening from her bright blonde to the soft lilac she wore today.
“Better?”
Little me giggled and clapped. “Pretty magic!”
Death laughed, and then abruptly stopped, staring off into space. “I have to go, Killian. Goodbye!”
“Will you come back and play?”
She paused, conflicted for a moment, before she smiled and nodded. “Sure.”
Then she vanished.
The dream faded after that, leaving us in a plain white room.
“I kept my promise and visited when I could, but as an age-appropriate playmate for you,” Death said.
She showed me dozens of dreams that played like a sped-up movie; A younger version of Death appeared, the same age as younger me, and the two of them played.
Over and over and over again.
“At first, I told myself that I would visit you once a month, but in less than a year, it was once a week, and before I knew it, I was spending almost every night with you.”
The scenes changed. I grew up, and so did Death, mimicking my age as close as she could from children to adolescents and finally teenagers. I was a thin, gangly kid, but Death was all grace and ethereal beauty.
“As you got older, we could have conversations in your dreams. We talked about whatever was going on in your life at the time, so many different human things that I never got to experience, or had forgotten,” she said with a smile in her voice. “Those were good years.
“Adeline asked me once before if I saw you as a child, and I hope this reaffirms what I said.” Death laughed. “You are one of the few humans I’ve ever interacted with, and by far the one I’ve spent the most time with. In fact, you could quite literally say that I grew up with you.”
I laughed, seeing the truth of that unfolding before my very eyes.
The scenes kept shifting, constantly changing. My house, a jungle, city ruins, and even a desert. The bleached white bones of a giant monster peered up through the desert sand. All of them surreal and distorted. But the two of us were constant as the dreams passed by. So many more, hundreds. Thousands.
More than a decade of memories.
All of Death.
All that I’d forgotten.
It was of a me that I didn’t remember. And it all came flooding back as the two of us strolled through the dreams as if we were walking in the park. I had the look of a dopey-eyed sap as I held hands with Death.
“I think we both knew we were in love at that point. But falling in love with a mortal. A human? It came with its own complications, and as you grew older, I had to visit less because I was forced to take more and more of your dreams each time.
“And then one day, when your memories were gone, you found someone else.”
A girl appeared in my mind’s eye. She was gorgeous, but it was a down-to-earth beauty. She had long wavy brown hair, a kind face, and the most beautiful green eyes I’d ever seen.
“Rebecca.”
My first real girlfriend, but as I realized now, not my first love.
Death had always been my very first love.
“Yes. I hated it, but it was my own fault it happened. So, I couldn’t say anything. When you two fell in love, I left you for over a year and let you forget all about me.”
I sighed as the memories of Rebecca faded. I hoped she was safe, or at least not suffering.
“She’s alive, if you were curious,” Death said, seemingly reading my mind.
“Is she safe?”
“Relativity. But that’s all I can say.”
I heaved a sigh of relief. “Good.”
Death kissed my cheek. “I know how much you cared for her and how heartbroken you were when she moved. I left you alone, but I was never far away. You were so sad, and I didn’t want you to suffer. I always gave your memories back when I came. But this time was different. I comforted you as you cried on my shoulder, and then I kissed you. It was our first kiss.”
More dreams began playing as we continued. Death and I as we were now, going on numerous dates in my dreams. We were both happy, and I smiled. I liked how I looked then.
“But what happened after? That doesn’t seem to be so long ago.”
“It wasn’t, but Callisto found you and chose you for the mantle. I couldn’t interfere. I was forced to take every single one of your memories and let you completely forget about me. I had no choice.”
The dreams faded then, and the darkness returned before I found myself back in bed with Death next to me.
I leaned over and brushed her lips in a quick kiss. “So that leads to now.”
She nodded. “As soon as I got the chance to be in your life again, I took it. I wanted to see if you would come to love me on your own without your memories, but I didn’t realize how much of you had been tied to the memories we shared. I’d essentially stolen a third of your life from you, and for that, I’m truly sorry.”
I couldn’t deny that I was upset at what had been taken from me. The person who I saw in those dreams was a version of me that I liked, but with the memories returned to me, we were now two different people trying to fuse into one. I didn’t know what it meant, but I was now no longer the same person I’d been an hour before, but I also wasn’t the same person Death had shown me.
I was now someone new.
And I didn’t know how to feel about that.
I was, quite literally, of two minds about it.
I snorted, chuckling at my stupid joke. It helped.
“What?” she asked, laughter making her eyes dance in the light streaming in from the bathroom.
“Nothing. Just a dumb joke.”
As I glanced at her, it was in an entirely new light. She’d told me she only had the best of intentions for me, and I had a lifetime of memories to back that up. I knew that Death would never willingly hurt me, that she loved me as much as I’d loved her.
