Empire's End Read Online Free PDF Page B

fervor that drew onlookers
from the shadows. People murmured in agreement and clenched their
fists as his voice rose. “Either we can watch the Great Cities fall
to the rotters or we can do something ourselves, to give all of
America a fighting chance!”
    He lowered his head. “I’m sorry. The anger is
always there—anger and helplessness. The outrage at what they’ve
done! That’s what drives me.”
    The people around them had begun to drift
away. “I understand,” Adam said.
    “Do you?”
    “I feel the same way about the undead.”
Taking the scythe from Thackeray, Adam added, “But not
helpless.”
    Thackeray nodded grimly. “There is still
hope. We can still... but the rotters, some of them, are getting
smarter. I suppose you’ve seen that too.”
    “From time to time.” In his mind’s eye Adam
saw the ones Lily’s mad brother had trained, like dogs. Only those
dogs nearly behaved like living, breathing humans.
    “The King of the Dead,” Thackeray whispered.
“Is he real?”
    “I don’t know of whom you’re speaking.”
    “Oh. Never mind then.”
    “They’re beasts. They have no king,” Adam
told the man. “Whatever you’ve heard is likely just a story people
tell.”
    “What do you call yourself?”
    “Adam.”
    “Well, Adam, you were just a story people
told, not long ago,” said Thackeray, and he disappeared into his
tent.
     

Five / Freedom
     
    “I can point you toward the Great Cities, but
that’s all I can do,” Thackeray told Adam the next morning. “We’re
moving east.”
    Adam had dreamt of Lily again. This time he
saw her huddled in shadow, shivering, as thick flakes of snow
settled in her long dark hair.
    These were more than just dreams, he was
sure. Once, he could have held her life’s flame in his very hands;
now he could only guess at what fate had in store for her. He had
to reach these Great Cities.
    The girl, Josie, set about drawing Adam a map
using charcoal on sackcloth. She paused to whisper something into
Thackeray’s ear. He nodded at her, and the girl beamed at Adam.
    The angel . It had been one of many
personas he’d adopted over the years in order to deal with mortals.
But it was this form, that of the pale man in black, that he was
most comfortable in. Perhaps that was why he’d been reborn with
this look. Perhaps he himself had willed it. So hard to remember.
Day by day he was forgetting the details of his service on the
other side.
    “Before you go there,” Thackeray said,
    “let me tell you why we’re not going with
you. Let me tell you what I know about the men who built the
Wall.
    “A few years ago, I lived there. I trusted in
the Senate, and even worked for them—I was an aide to the Senate’s
President-for-life. Gillies. God-fearing son of a preacher. He
really believed—still does—that it’s his calling to rebuild the
world. For who, Man or God or both, I can’t tell ya. But he truly
believes that what he’s doing is good, and right —and that’s
the problem.
    “When we came out here to try and sway the
badlanders, I was on his side. Even when rotters swarmed the convoy
in Utah and half of us were left for dead—still I was on his side.
I shrugged off the badlanders’ offers of food and shelter and
trekked back to the Great Cities with my colleagues. Back to
Cleveland, where my mother lived.
    “What happened there is beyond reprehensible.
What they’ve done, in the name of what’s good and right, is
depraved—and these atrocities are bred by ignorance, not evil.”
    Adam listened, and Josie drew, while
Thackeray told him everything.
    “Here we are free,” he said when he was
finished. “Here we take the good with the bad and we face our
problems. We share grief as well as joy, and it makes us appreciate
the joy all the more. I understood that, for when I came back to
Utah, back to the badlanders, grieving, they took me in with open
arms.”
    He placed a hand on Adam’s shoulder. “You
know what Man is capable of.