The Last Watchmen Read online

  With Dekker obviously distracted by his thoughts, Ezekiel glanced at the nearby flat-topped buildings and stepped back. He pulled a small mirror from his pocket and angled it against the sun; flashing a nearby tower, he blinded his rooftop target at the precise second. Moments later, two guards next to him fell dead, their chests’ torn open by sniper fire. The bullets’ cracking reports erupted just after, sending the masses into panic. Dekker scrambled for cover as the other guards sprang into action and Ezekiel ran for his life.

  Shrieks roared from the crowd as more gunfire erupted all around. An all-out riot boiled over, hateful screams and insults, punctuated by bullets as the normally opposed religious adherents hurled accusations and fists. The parliament went into full lock-down as the panicked crowd imploded upon itself.

  The guards fired over the riotous assembly trying to back them down. Unknown assailants returned the favor with opposing gunfire, wounding three more guards. The Parliament sentries retaliated, opening fire; they mowed down both violent and passive protestors alike resulting in total massacre.

  Military vehicles swooped in, blasting more fire into the assembly. All who fled were either seized by nearby police or gunned down.

  Ezekiel slipped away through a blind-spot just as constables tackled the young Dekker near at the Parliament doors. They slammed the Watchman to the ground, crushing his face into the pavement, and bound his hands and feet.

  ***

  Corcoran Andrews listened to Dekker’s advice with only half an ear. As equally distracted as Dekker was by the newsfeeds, Andrews was by the mechanics and science of Dekker’s wild claim.

  Violence trickled in via the real-time video. Dekker said, “In a few minutes, the area will be secure and we can make a run for it. Just follow the plan and you should be able to disappear with your new identity. I’ve got to leave you in a few minutes, but first I’ll see you safely past the containment checkpoints.”

  Aleel consumed Dekker’s mind. He knew exactly where to find her: the safe-house on the edge of the city. He could be there in just a few minutes! He had plenty of time to spare.

  The media networks boiled with the event. Every public official decried the violence exhibited by all sides of the conflict and expressly condemned what they saw as the root source of the turmoil: uncontrolled faith-groups.

  “There’s blind rage inherent in every religious faction! They’re all zealots and need to be controlled,” one politician urged.

  Another channel broadcasted MEA Chief Magnate Layle; he promised new laws which would require all religions to register. Layle boldly guaranteed forced submission and regulation to the laws and direct oversight by the Pheema, the great peacemaker of the Krenzin race, in order to squelch radical faiths.

  Reporters and politicians each made bids to condemn the violence over the airwaves and advance their careers. Officials verbally attacked both protesters and the military, demanding the immediate confiscation of all lethal firearms and heavy restrictions.

  “The MEA is on the verge of total peace. We always have been,” a commentator urged. “We need only a little more regulation to see it become reality!”

  Dekker grimaced as the Pheema spoke on a different network. “All this hate-speech from radical faith groups must be quelled. Some groups even outlawed if necessary; it is to the benefit of all beings… All have rights to belief, except for those exclusive hatemongers who withhold peace from the many. People are capable of choosing a new belief set. It happens all the time; we find new truths as we advance our personal evolution and knowledge.”

  Detecting a hint of smugness, Dekker felt compelled to throw a brick at the screen. All the violence and death that Dekker knew would amass over the next two days would escalate; millions would die before the worldwide, reactionary riots ceased. Amid the storm, Dekker only cared about saving Aleel. To that effect, he hoped to put a bullet in Austicon’s head, and he knew exactly where the terrorist would be ninety minutes from now.

  “Time’s running out. Are you ready to go?” Dekker’s eyes remained fixated on the news-screen. He didn’t even glance at Andrews as he plotted the quickest escape route.

  “If you’re saying this is my last chance, I’ve got to look at this device, quick.” Andrews unsnapped the temporal stabilizer on Dekker’s arm.

  “No! Don’t touch that!” Like a flickering connection, Dekker disappeared, winking out of existence, bare-wristed.

  Stunned, Andrews held the device in his hand. Remembering Dekker’s instructions, and the danger he was in. The reality of his situation suddenly hit him and Andrews bolted for the door.

  ***

  A dim indicator light flashed on Ezekiel’s belt when he checked the status LEDs indicating Dekker had been flung from the timeline. “Well, you succeeded in the task at hand and Andrews is secure, at least.” He sighed heavily, hidden within the shadows. He’d secretly hoped that Dekker could somehow manage to arrive by his side and prevent what happened next—but he’d seen the investigator try and fail that before. It always ended the same.

  Ezekiel watched a silent group of assassins move into position across the alley. Prognon Austicon strolled down the sidewalk and skipped giddily up the safe-house steps. The terrorist pushed the doorbell, waited two seconds, and then kicked in the door.

  “Dodona,” the time traveler spat, identifying the assassin team that revered Austicon as a god and worshipped the trees he communed with. Ezekiel turned his face away. He knew what happened next; he didn’t need to see it. The ringing gunfire and Aleel’s screams were more than enough. “I’m sorry, my old friend. But this is how it always happened.”

  Ezekiel wiped a tear from his cheek and picked up a rusty spade shovel. He dialed in his next coordinates and picked up the heavy, fully stocked ammunition crate he’d just sealed and then slipped off the current plane of existence. He needed to dig a hole, yet, and then locate Diacharia.

  ***

  Dekker blinked rapidly. Fractions of a second ago, he’d been in the past. Now, he stood in his bedroom at the foot of his bed, holding the Reliquary in his hands. The door to his inner room remained sealed, but he could hear Guy banging against it with ham-fisted, reckless abandon.

  “You alright in there, Dekker? We heard gunfire!”

  Glancing over to his private alcove, Dekker saw he’d nearly missed putting a bullet through his priceless tome. Long had he guarded the ancient relic—the last of its kind, it had been outlawed during the riots he’d just relived. Dekker was the last Watchman. Next to that, and almost as valuable to him, were the photos: albums, clippings, and framed prints of Aleel. Near that, research materials that had helped him track Austicon all these years. The bullet had torn a clean hole through Prognon Austicon’s forehead on an old bounty poster.

  The door slid open and Dekker stepped out. Most of the Dozen had arrived, weapons in hand, after hearing the gunshot. Vesuvius vainly tried to sneak a peek inside Dekker’s inner sanctum as the door closed behind him.

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’re sure?” Vesuvius looked skeptical, obviously worried.

  “Yeah. But I don’t really want to talk about it.”

  The others started to shuffle out, knowing better than to press Dekker for information. Shaw came into the room, completely oblivious to the rest of the chaos. “Dekker, some stodgy MEA guy just dropped this off. Said it was for your eyes only. He said something about the level of confidence we displayed at the Osix job—awfully odd to come by so late at night.”

  A fingerprint scanner sealed the locked case. Dekker activated it with a thumb and removed the data: details on a job—a high paying job. Red letters marked the top page: DNIET. The next few pages contained dossiers, mostly of unheard of scientists at a distant space-bound research station.

  One photo jumped out at him, although older than their last meeting, Dekker couldn’t forget the face. The subtitle listed him as Doctor Abe MacAllistair. Dekker knew him by another name: Corcoran Andrews.

  “E
veryone get ready. We’ve got a new job.”

  Dekker’s Dozen #005

  Unicorn Zombie Spores

  The Verdant Seven stood stalwart under the gentle breeze of their foreign planet; six of the arboleans’ leaves rustled gently and in unison. The holdout, quiet now for several millennia, had been stripped bare. The council’s minions had ripped away both bark and leaf.

  Gnarled branches reached toward the ruddy, glowing sky. Withered, skeletal fingers once proudly bore the bladed green fauna of the arbolean council. No more; it was the traitor—the dissident. Condemned. Silenced. Dead.

  It is set in motion. Our will is set; the child awakens soon, and so our champion rises. The Left Hand seeks the apothecium; he will germinate an army while the Right Hand sets our stage. We’ve been patient, sisters. The Centauri system is fertile; it is time to spread our seed.

  Under the rust-hued sky, leaves of the six trees rustled with excitement.

  ***

  He hung back in the shadows, watching flames lick the sky: tongues like thirsty dogs. Though he’d been garbed in a similar, yellow cloak, he was vastly different from the rest; every other member of the Dodona cult was female.

  His eyes darted around the room which he exited to reach the yard. The room resembled an ancient crypt, or perhaps one the pharaoh’s treasure rooms. The archaeologist’s nature yearned to study everything within; each artifact looked entirely foreign to him—perhaps not even native to earth. That longing, however, had waned since his encounter with the ancient pithos he’d uncovered in his dig. He’d been warned of a curse—but the archaeologist did not believe in such things.

  Still, ever since cracking the seal of that heavy, leaden container he’d felt another presence—another personality—wrestling control from him. He’d read the warning inscriptions written in six ancient languages, but his damnable curiosity demanded he open it. That was the Christmas Eve of 1902, nearly eighteen months ago. From that night on, he’d felt himself slowly disappear under this new personality.

  Nearby, another elderly woman beckoned. The woman in the center of the cultic circle was long dead; her desiccated body had long ago petrified in a mummy-like state. Surrounding her, the frenzied women appeared quite alive by comparison, jumping and chanting. Suddenly, they stopped, fell quiet, and walked to the beech trees at the edge of the flame-light’s reach.

  Standing below the leafy fauna, the head priestess listened intently to the way the trees rustled in the still, windless night. “It is confirmed.” Her tone carried authority. “The Verdant Seven will be whole again. The sister that we murdered will be allowed to reseed. May her trunk remain burnt and impotent; her embryo will implant within this… male… who stumbled into our world.” She spat the word as if levying an insult.

  Drawing a serrated knife, she ripped the cadaver’s chest open and withdrew a gnarled, curved stake. “The seed is intact and ready for its new shell,” the head priestess stated. Two acolytes pushed the cadaverous husk into the blaze. “Step forward, man. Become the Left Hand of the Verdant Seven.”

  No! This is so much more than I’d bargained for! Prognon Austicon stepped forward—no, not him—it was the demon within that controlled him—the archaeologist was powerless to stop it! That’s not even my name, it’s just an alias! Every shred of what he once was had begun to slip away—he’d known his face since the day he unsealed that otherworldly vessel.

  Austicon ripped open his shirt and bared his chest. He watched as the priestess plunged the stake, an arbolean seed, below his sternum. Trapped inside his mind, the archeologist screamed; outwardly Austicon only grinned fiendishly. Centuries later, the trapped scientist would still scream, a constant background noise that ever brought a smile to the assassin’s lips.

  The memory was warm and sweet, like foreign blood on his tongue; it came pouring back to him as he entered the Dodonic Inner Sanctum. Austicon faintly remembered that old curiosity, his need to know what artifacts lay buried within each container. He retrieved the small, latched cask and peered inside to ensure the apothecium remained alive. A twisted smile spread across his face. The deadly arbolean fungus signaled the beginning of the end for humanity.

  ***

  Andrews breathed into his air mask. He still called himself Andrews in his mind despite his best efforts to convince his psyche to accept a new name. Several days had passed since the theft and he could do nothing with that time but stew in his anger and impotence. The only other option was to watch the MEA’s streaming broadcasts and cuss at the video feeds. He’d lived through revolutionary events, but the current state of things looked as bleak as ever.

  A live video feed covered every detail of the political installation; the ceremony took place on Earth at the Mother Earth Aggregate headquarters in Neo Mesopotamia. The Grand Council of the MEA had chosen to fill the slot of Chief Magnate with the Krenzin leader: The Pheema. For the first time since its inception, a nonhuman controlled Earth politics.

  “First they boot all religions from modern society, and then they want to convert us to an alien one! Absurd.” He vented to no one in particular. Andrews assumed he was the only human still alive in the whole sector. That was a logical assumption based on recent events.

  Andrews hated being helpless—he’d done his best to prepare for hostile situations ever since the first assassination attempt on his life, years ago. The Krenzin philosophy that mandated peaceful nonresistance didn’t seem to eliminate those lethal threats he’d observed over the decades. Andrews was a Darwinian and passive submission made no sense to hard science. “Only the strong in mind or body survive!” He cussed out the entertainment console. Strength resisted rivals by its nature. “Now that bleeding-headed fool has control of Earth and can influence the planets allied with the MEA? Get your own stupid planet, you rotten felinoid!”

  He held his breath and stuck a whiskey bottle under his breathing mask and took a pull. He’d meticulously sterilized it to avoid infections.

  The feed crackled for a second from the interstellar interference. “I’m happy to accept this prestigious position, and I’m so excited that the vast majority of humanity endorses this move. It is a huge step forward. As a people, we are so grateful that you have welcomed us so whole-heartedly; since the loss of our kind’s planet, Earth has become our new home. I want to ensure you all that we will continue with current measures. I’m pleased to report that our disarmament protocols have remained on schedule. The only remaining, operational weapons facility under MEA control and funding is Darkside Station, on Earth’s moon and the capital we’ve saved by defunding the engines of war have been shifted over to benevolent missions of peace, such as new education and philosophic centers across the quadrant.”

  Andrews bristled at The Pheema’s speech. He shook his head, thinking of a test subject he’d once seen that lost its immune system… defenseless.

  “We need not fear the vile darkness of war. Through peace and love we are strong! The faithful know this as true enlightenment. The militant mind is an old way of thinking. There is no art of war; it possesses no aesthetics, only overwhelming ugliness. Military is moot when utter peace is achieved, and we are so close, my brothers and sisters.

  “I know that there lingers pockets of resistance, but only because they do not understand. They would rather see an entire planet of soldiers than of lovers, and that is, in fact, exactly what I am offering! Each citizen will go through mandatory training classes. True citizenship means working for the corporate good of the planet and culture. The citizen’s army will include each and every one of you!”

  The video screen didn’t respond to Andrew’s string of expletives. “Classes don’t make someone a soldier—what a joke.” His speech had slightly slurred. “There is no army, just bleeding pacifists if you train them in Krenzin philosophy. You just wait, planet Earth… wait for the other shoe to drop. Your army class’ll contain sensitivity training and cultural dynamics but no marksmanship courses.”

  True, Andrews had a rep
utation as paranoid, but he saw the logical connections. He just couldn’t help feeling that this regime was somehow linked to the theft of his new tech: a potential doomsday super-weapon.

  He looked around at the empty room he’d been stuck in for so many days now. His eyes scanned a stack of old books and then returned to The Pheema’s broadcast. “‘Something wicked this way comes,’” he quoted.

  ***

  Dekker leaned into his ship’s violent bucking and braced himself against the shuddering bulkhead. “Corgan!” he shouted over his shoulder at his pilot, “I said evasive maneuvers!”

  They’d been dumped out of FTL almost directly on top of a Shivan interdictor, quite possibly the same one that had attacked them previously; without a transponder signal they could never tell for certain. The newly upgraded shields on the Rickshaw Crusader held defiantly as Dekker spat a curse on Prognon Austicon.

  “Guy!” Dekker shouted for his explosives expert. “Get ready to kick Bertha at these murks!”

  Dekker stepped into the munitions room and yelled over the laser-cannons; they blared angrily at the interceptors that swarmed around them. The larger interdictor could belch more units at them any minute. “I ain’t fooling around with these guys, and I think we owe them one!” He pointed to Guy so his man could understand him over the loud guns, then he pointed to Bertha: the large cylindrical device strapped onto a rack near a loading hatch.

  Guy’s eyes lit up. He dropped his sandwich and scrambled to meet Dekker at the massive bomb. They’d gotten it, unofficially, from a MEA munitions disposal facility. The current mission was funded very secretly and with a huge budget which allowed them certain privileges, like Big Bertha’s presence. She was a very-illegal prototype triple-stage nuclear fusion weapon acquired by their friends at Darkside Station.

  The two investigators released the ratchets; within seconds they stumbled as the ship shook—the interceptors landed a few lucky blows. The lights flickered briefly as shields compensated and the Crusader’s cannons rained hellfire on two interceptors, ripping them apart.