Part One

Splendor

Nathaniel Slattery

Scene 1

He pushed his blanket away. The slab of metal clattered as it fell out of the car and onto the concrete. Other people may have had something to say about him calling it his blanket, but he hadn't seen any people, real people, in twenty-two years. It was a curved piece of metal covered on the concave side with some kind of cloth. He assumed it was a door from a car.

He pulled himself off his bed. His bed was like his blanket, but bigger, and both were bigger than him. When he slept in them, they looked like any other metal debris on the street. No one walking by would suspect a person to be sleeping in it. And it was in a car.

He pulled a knife out of the car and cut the last tatters of his shirt up. He stowed those in his pack, fuel for the fire that would cook his food. That was his last shirt, and it had been a damn good one.

Daved ate a customary breakfast with a steep alcohol content and started to wake up. Just Daved. His last name made too many false promises.

Daved watched a rat paw at something a few meters away. He shot at it. Following the body with his eyes, Daved shot it again, and it skidded down the street minus its limbs.

He went to work on the dilapidated engine of the car he'd slept in. Rats were just one of the pests that fed on death and somehow survived the holocaust. Humans were the chief ones. The main difference was the sounds they made. Rats made a sort of snorting squeal. Humans made more pitiful noises.

Loud pitiful noises, inquiring and threatening from a safe distance. Today they brought weapons, as if they'd somehow gotten over their inability to learn, or, maybe, evolution had kicked in. Daved had certainly killed enough of the dumb ones.

He ignored them. These weren't people. They weren't respectable. The ones you could respect were the ones that cowered in their homes: these were the ones that searched the former out. Ironic, how intelligence is bred in horizontal lines in times of wretchedness, the only time it would do any good. He grabbed a cloth and started wiping his hands off.

"Whatcha' doin' out here all alone, Motherfucker? Workin' on these piece-of-shit cars? Hangin' out with them rats? Tell you what, how's about we paint this here car for you? With your blood?"

He smiled at them, partly because the cliché actually entertained him. There were just two of them. One was evidently leading, as he was the one that talked and carried the bigger gun, while the other stood back a little way holding a handgun. The first held a rifle. He was wearing mismatching clothing and decorations that were meant to scare, with a yellowed white mask painted to look like it was stained in blood. The other was the same without the mask.

The runt looked hesitant. He stared at Daved, as if in recognition, and tried to get his friend's attention.

Jack turned and waved his rifle around. In that instant, they both could have been killed, but Daved was enjoying the show.

"That's Moth." Daved's smile twitched. "Look at this," Garrett pulled a dirty, rolled up, colorful sheaf of papers from his back pocket and threw it to Jack.

Daved leaned in to get a look. "They got a magazine now, huh? Who cared that much?"

Jack waved his gun back at Daved. "Shut up! Fucker! I don't care if you're fucking Superman! You just shut the fuck-" His last wishes ended with a loud crack as his skull exploded outward. The blood spread out way too much, getting on Daved and his car.

The other guy didn't spend too much time waiting around. Of course, that just made the shot a bit off target. It went through the back of his knee. The kid screamed and begged loudly, but thankfully the shooter enjoyed it as little as Daved did. A third shot.

Daved hadn't moved. It was this kind of shit that started the superhero thing, when shit just solved itself. He looked up, and a piece of debris was walking down the street hefting a long rifle. Despite himself, he kept smiling.

It was usually a good idea to smile until you knew a person.

Scene 2

"Ever been to Europe?" said Dafram. Daved didn't hate Dafram, and he hated most people.

"Europe? What the hell is going on in Europe? Tourism issues?" Daved sat in his car with his elbows on his knees outside of the car. An automatic rifle set not far from him in the car, and he considered, for a moment, using it. He didn't like Dafram, either. For one thing, the man had a goofy name. It sounded sarcastically foreign. Right now he was leaning against the back seat's door next to Daved. He was tall, even taller in his Armac-issued recon suit. The camouflage graphics had flickered away by now, and he had removed his helmet. Right now he stood almost seven feet, a good eight inches taller than reality.

"Russians, that's what. In Germany. What did you think just 'cause the world ended we'd stop fuckin' killin' each other? Nah. War's not like that. It's stubborn." Despite the cynicism, Daved remembered the bastard being one hell of a patriot. He grunted to his own thoughts, and Dafram seemed to take it as answer enough to his words. "One Russian in particular, Arseny Petrov."

"Wow that name's about as easy as they come to Russians. You tell me why I should. And don't give me that god damned speech about my country and its pride. Look around you! What fucking kind of country is left to fight for? And on a different continent, too?"

"You should know by now that 'speech' was just for recruits. No one really believes it. It's just a good way to get 'em to die for us." Maybe he wasn't so nationalistic, at least not anymore. Maybe he was just a good liar. "Here's why you should do it. The Fuckerski's mad that's why. Damn Ruskies need to learn how to screen their recruits. Anyways, you know them Russian scientists got a whole buncha' radiated things locked up for study, right?"

"How the fuck did fiends get to Germany?"

"Hopped a boat, plane, fuckin' Ruskies came here and got 'em: how should I know? They are a lot different than good ol' American stock though, look like polar bears on two feet. Angry polar bears. Maybe they evolved somewhere down the line, or maybe they actually were polar bears somewhere down the line."

"So what's this guy doing with the polar bears in the lab? Bestiality?"

Dafram laughed and coughed an expletive, presumably about the cough. "Shit, no! Don't get that image in my head. That's probably why they're studying them. Anyways, no. And they're not in Germany."

"Well, why'd you even mention them then?"

"Cause this guy's trying to get the German scientists to make the fiends work for them. We don't want that, it smacks of "psychological weaponry", and we hold the corner on that market. So kill him, and do the Russians a favor."

"Sounds like a mighty complicated job, buddy. What did you say you were paying?"

"You mean you don't want to do this for the good of mankind?"

"You're hilarious."

"I know I am. Well, besides the scenic vacation, and any supplies you ask for, we'll give you six thousand."

"I don't want six thousand."

Dafram spluttered. Six thousand was a ridiculous payment, and would be enough for any soldier to sample a prostitute from every major "city" in the country, plus some fine alcohol and safe transportation, and still live the high life after that. But, even if Dafram had expected Moth to accept that, he was sure Armac leadership hadn't, or they wouldn't have offered. They liked to think they knew him. No one knew him. They all thought he was some god damned hero. He was just lucky. Bad luck to get him into shit, good luck to fix it for him. It was all the same to him.

Dafram tapped his shoulder.

He flashed him a smile that promised no good will.

He was careful, "Did you hear me? I said, 'What do you want then?'"

"I want a new shirt."

"What is that, a metaphor? We could pay you anything!"

"I'm not in the Armac's pay. And I'm not in their debt. I make my own decisions when I go over there, and if I decide to save the guy, if I decide to marry him, I'm not going to have a bunch of National Guardsmen with high opinions of themselves saying I owe them something."

Dafram left. He hoped the other meetings went so well.

Scene 3

He was running. Desperately.

He looked back, it was still chasing him. He shot a burst at it, but the damn thing kept coming. He tried to fire again, nothing came out. Shit!

Grass rustling at his passage. Running. Tiring. Hunger. The scent, the intoxicating scent of meat. Hope. Pushing through bushes. Scratched. Metal bursting from prey. Pounce. Prey beating with metal-thrower. Why not throwing metal? Found weak spot. Bite. Blood flooding mouth. Pleasure.

More hunger.

Daved could fly. Pretty well, too, but he hadn't finished learning. The local Armac HQ had offered him a pilot, but he turned them down. He didn't get to fly, ever. Planes were one of the few things that beat cars. Maybe he'd make a try at a flying car sometime.

There was the coast. Which was good, because he was supposed to be running low on fuel, if the warning sirens could be trusted. Armac may have outfitted this tiny plane with the kind of upgrades you'd need to make it across the ocean like a Lindbergh without the risk, but only barely. And, besides, Daved didn't trust anything he didn't build himself. Also, those circles around some picturesque islands probably hadn't helped him.

He quickly gave up on trying to think of a way to land, and decided to think of the safest way to crash. He gave up on that soon, too. A shallow descent cleaved into the plains below.

Eject the magazine. Put to the side. Empty the chamber. Feel for empty chamber. Pull charging handle back. Press side retaining pin. Remove charging handle. Remove bolt-carrier. Press forward retaining pin. Put receivers and handle aside. Clean bolt-carrier. Grease and check pins. Replace charging handle. Slide bolt-carrier into upper receiver. Push charging handle forward. Replace upper receiver into lower receiver. Replace retaining pins. Clean and check trigger.

165 seconds. Improvement.

In front of Alize Kanone lay an HK MSG-90A1 German-made high range high accuracy rifle. It was her pride and joy. Her only pride and joy. She spent hours cleaning and practicing with it.

Above the usual sound of the mindless fiends rose gunshots. Alize hefted her rifle and went to the window. She saw them falling left and right, but there was no sign of the assailant. Who was killing her guardsmen?

Someone banged on the door and more gunfire sounded, presumably down the stairs. She took an HK MP5 from her holster and fired where the knocker's foot should be. Then she burst more rounds all around the floor in case she had missed, before the intruder could fall. She opened the door, submachine gun pointing at where the head should be. She hadn't heard any sounds of pain.

She had suspected correctly. The intruder hadn't fallen, because it was a piece of debris. As she watched, it flickered into a giant black metal creature. The bullets had apparently bounced off. She pressed the muzzle of her weapon against its glass eye.

"Put your gun down!"

She pressed it harder.

"Listen, I have a job opportunity for you here. The government wants to hire you."

"Who are you?"

"I am with the United States Secret Service."

She fired.

The fiends were grateful for her gift of meat. She wondered why they never attacked her. Maybe they recognized her as one of them, even though she didn't look it. She had been there when the bombs fell, and she hadn't aged a year since then, but the ensuing radiation and chaos hadn't evolved her with the fiends into some kind of new species. Back before the bombs, before mutations in most humans had magnified evolution into a daily process rather than a centennial one, she had been living in Communist East Germany. She had been a member of the military police, and escaped over into the West before the Wall went up. There, she'd continued her career. Being unable to enlist in the demilitarized German Army, she had signed up with the British occupiers. British occupation forces had been so closely related to American forces that they fraternized constantly. Somehow she got the notion into her head that an ocean was like a rainbow, and over it there'd be a better life to live. Then the bombs fell.

That was May 12, 1989, and she had been twenty years old. She'd been twenty since 1948. Now it was 2253, and she had found out in the midst of all those dates that not only did she could shoot pretty damn well, as well as stay young. She liked guns.

She walked down to the cellar, past some fiends, and peeled open a can of peaches. Gulping them down on her way back up, she took a look outside her window. The window was on the eighth floor of what was probably a hotel, giving a good vantage point of the little group of buildings where she lived. It was comfortable. She had a room for all the guns she had managed to save from before the nukes, and the ones she had collected afterwards. There were a few rooms for just her pet dogs. There was a room for just her food. There was a room for just her uniforms. There was a room for anything.

Alize didn't use most of them. She kept pairs of clothes available in a trunk in one of her three rooms, with a tub to clean them in. She kept her food stored entirely in the cellar. She kept her guns in the same room where she slept. She gave the last room to her two pet dogs. That was all she needed. She could leave in short notice, with her boat. Her five-eleven frame may take up significant space, but her lifestyle didn't, and it was a big boat.

Scanning the horizon for threats, she brushed black hair out of her eyes. Outcasts. Walking into town. She had personally visited a nearby settlement for supplies and discovered that her land had a reputation as being a place no one came back from, and she had worked very hard to create that. But the offshoots of city scum were getting confident. One of the beauties of dealing with them was that they made great decorations to warn others away. She'd wait until they got close, first. There were half a dozen of them, and her little town sat cradled by mountainside, with one road, and open land. They wouldn't avoid her gaze, even if they'd known she was watching. Of course, somehow that metal man had managed it…

Scene 4

Her rifle banged against her shoulder as the outcast's throat ceased to exist. It was the last one. He had been running away, and the shot was difficult. Her job was finished for today, though. She'd sleep for a few hours then collect the guns they'd brought her and set up the bodies. Falling asleep was easy, for her.

She woke. She knew from the dim lighting in the window that it was well before when she had planned to awake. She got up quickly and grabbed a Franchi SPAS-12. Alize listened intently.

There was a buzz.

She went in the direction she thought she heard it, down the stairs. She heard it again, louder. Kanone followed it, holding her shotgun ready. It sounded like radio static.

Opening a door to an abandoned storeroom, she saw a handheld radio sitting on a crate. She carefully scanned the room, then picked up the radio.

It buzzed. "Alizia, we - you're there. Answer the - please." Static interrupted a man's voice periodically.

She picked it up and pressed the receiver. She said nothing.

"Alizia, we still have an offer for you, even if our agent is dead. Please respond.

"Go to hell."

"We have a job for you in Germany. When's the last time you've been there?"

She was silent for a long time.

"Listening."

"Right. Well, we need a man killed."

"Why?"

"He's going to kill one of our men."

"What happens when someone tries to kill me?"

"He's in Vienna."

"That's not Germany."

"We're paying a lot of money."

"Good morning, Mr. Rache."

"Good morning, Lucy. Are you ready to learn today?"

"Yeah, today I feel like maybe I'll do better. What are we learning about?"

"History. It's all I teach, Lucy." Rache laughed.

Lucy winced. "History of what?"

Rache told her that they would be learning about their own government, before the bombs. She was already heading to her seat, as if she really had no interest in the answer, and it was irrelevant to how well she'd do. It probably was.

She was ten, and about the average age for most of the children in Liam's class. There were five other classes, with their own teachers: History, Trading, Reading, Hunting, and Science. There were maybe thirty children in the whole village, and they went to every subject every day, and they were lucky that this place was intelligent enough to self-educate; once they were fifteen, they married, and started contributing to the village. The farmers produced food, the traders traded for everything needed, everyone gathered water, everyone cooked, and the hunters took care of the animals, and hunted with tools traded for by the traders. It was a small slice of simple paradise, and Liam cherished his role of helping raise its offspring.

He was happy with his life. There were none of the complications he'd seen elsewhere. He'd been here fifteen years now and no one seemed to notice that he did not age. They didn't know enough about the world to sense the anomaly. Either that or they didn't care. He wanted no more, and he wanted no less.

"Teacher!"

"What, Kendric?"

"I think I heard something."

"We all hear things, Ken-"

And then he heard it. Someone was screaming. That scream was enough to make Liam feel a sudden dread, and he went to the window of the small schoolhouse. As he looked out, he saw a man dressed in uniform surrounded by black metallic giants. Two were gripping Gary, a farmer, between them. The uniform seemed to be questioning him.

Apparently the questions were answered.

The officer turned his back and Gary was shot in the head. Liam turned to his students. "All of you! Hide under your desks, now! This isn't the time to argue!"
That bit in stories where the guy gets everyone to listen to him by voicing his strong leadership, that's a joke. They burst into confused commotion. Liam tried to quiet them, their worries were loud enough to attract attention, but in the middle of his efforts, an officer, different then the one outside, strode into the schoolhouse.

"You children line up and exit the building!"
"Who are you?" Liam approached the man, who took out a gun and pointed it back.

The kids needed someone to take care of them, while they could not. That was Liam's job, even if no one else thought so. The man dropped his gun. The world needs its kids, and it needs them brought up right. If you weren't willing to do anything to help them, then you weren't worth the spittle God invested in you. The man's eyes closed. These children weren't perfect, because they weren't grown yet. Liam would help them become good enough to fix this world. The man fell, and Liam caught the falling gun. No matter what you messed up in your lifetime, you could always get a second chance. Just give it to them.

The children were cowering under their seats. One looked at him with animal fear in her eyes. He turned, and there was a dead man in front of him. His hand bent at an unnatural angle, and a stream of blood rushed from his broken temple, pooling under him and soaking his no longer pristine uniform. Liam held a gun. There was banging on the door.

He crashed through the door and knocked someone down into the dust. Those giants he had seen before were encircling him now. He swung his gun at them. There were still people to protect.

Scene 5

White spray flew up all around Alize as her boat cut swathes through the ocean waters. She liked her boat, like she had her dogs, but it wasn't her pride and joy. She wished she could take her rifle out and clean it, but she didn't want to let it get wet when she didn't have to, and the ocean wind was heavy with water. All she felt safe working with was the AK-47 rifle, ever-reliable. She remembered when the thing had first been invented, right before video games in her memory. It was featured in games like white was featured in snow. Not that she had played them, but she knew some kids in her time, and back then, there was no escaping the great American advertising mechanism. The rifle had a reputation for being shoddy, which was mostly due to wartime hatred and was laughable in its complete disagreement with reality. It was one of her favorites; of course, they were all her favorites now. She hadn't brought along any that weren't.

The dogs were another thing she'd left behind, with all the food it didn't make sense to bring. Besides weapons, she'd brought a pair or two of clothes. She'd known that most of this journey was going to be on land, but having a cache of supplies was always useful, no matter where it was, and so her boat held more than she would be able to carry.

Kanone saw the coastline in the distance. She marveled again at the resources the Realm sported: they had supply stops at a number of islands across the ocean. They claimed to be the government, but she didn't believe that was the entire story. If there was a government, then somehow there'd have to still be a country. She was pretty sure one couldn't die without the other. Still, there was no other explanation for their suspicious quantity of resources.

She had seen those resources personally; it was the only way she had made it across tumultuous currents. That and luck: there had been close calls and storms in double the frequency of supply stops. But it was over now, and Alize was glad. She wondered yet again why she was going to land at that jutting peninsula of a growth off of the southwest of Europe. It seemed simpler to her to enter the sea, or go north and land in France. Perhaps the cost of naval travel was too much to justify the speedier trip: even the government had to have its limits.

She docked at a little wooden port and some grunts in light uniforms tied up her boat. She wasn't comfortable with leaving it here, but she had no other option. She loaded up a pack and proceeded to a ramshackle building that one of the soldiers directed her to. She assumed she'd be briefed there.

The door creaked open uncomfortably, and she paused. A conversation seemed to have been interrupted, as an officer with a decorated uniform and a woman looked up at her. He dismissed her with a hand gesture, and she slid off of his desk and pushed past Alize. She watched her go.

Turning back to the man, she was waved to a seat in front of his desk. "I assume you know what you're here for. Hell, probably more than me."

She stared him in the eyes.

"Well, of course you do. Your route is north, on road. There shouldn't be any traffic; these parts are abandoned. There's a town where you can resupply a bit, but don't count on it. Eventually there will be another command post. Just keep walking until you get there, simple enough. Any questions?"

"No."

"Well, hope you like to hike."

Scene 6

There was pain.

Now, there was smell: a horrid, decaying smell; he couldn't breath. His face was hot.

There was something on top of him, sMothring him. He tried to push it and his arms protested. Gathering his strength, telling himself that he still might die, he hefted it off. Standing up was too much, he drifted off again.

This time he managed. He looked around, dazed. He remembered things. His name came first: Liam. It felt new. Liam Rache. It sat like a snake on his tongue.

Everything around him was burnt, or burning.

Dead, or dying.

He saw life burning away. It had been his. But it had been taken from him, before it was lit on fire. Now it was just others' life, and it wouldn't even be that for much longer.

Swaying slightly, he looked down and grabbed his head. He saw at his feet what had sMothred him. It was a body. He recognized the face.

He went lightheaded and almost collapsed again, this time without a blow to the back of the head. He didn't remember anything after leaving the school house, but there was a lump, and it wasn't hard to piece together.

He walked around mindlessly, trying to recognize his old home. He saw the schoolhouse, went and picked up that gun. He saw dead everywhere, not a one of them went unrecognized. He saw children.

There were piles of bodies. The wreckage was haphazard, but there was a sick sense of order to it. Like a stage. He pretended it was for him. After all, he'd survived. Maybe they were bitter that he killed an officer.

He came to another pile, and sat on someone's charred belly. No, he was just a teacher. They thought he had been dead. Why else would he have ended up in one of these piles. The pile under him groaned. He must have just been lucky, surviving this. Bad luck. Much better to have been killed with the rest of these simple people.

Dead bodies didn't groan. He got up, entertaining a sad trickle of hope that told him he had definitely heard something. He moved the bodies quickly: they were dead; they didn't require grace.

At the very bottom was a girl. She was burned like everything else, he couldn't even recognize her face. But she talked.

"Isher… Ray…" Barely.

He recognized the voice of Lucy. She was crying, but no tears came out. Her inability to talk didn't stop her from asking him what was going on, telling him that she was in pain. She was dying, slowly, cruelly. Like a little present from whatever madman controlled this world, she lay there. Metal was cold in his hands, despite everything burning around it. He told her to close her eyes.

She closed her eyes.

Tyler wanted to be surprised by what he saw, shocked and distraught even, but he was a soldier. This wasn't the first time he'd seen a civilian settlement torched, even the civilians themselves. Hell, he'd usually been partly to blame.

They were driving between command posts when they found the village. It was a small trading stop. Now people along this route would have to figure how to pack twice the supplies and make them last twice as long. It looked like there were no survivors. Then again, he couldn't really tell from the outskirts.

"I'm going in for a closer look. Hold the fort." His gunner grunted at him. There was hardly any threat out in the middle of no where like this. Then again, who'd burned that village, if there was nothing hostile?

"Look, buddy, if you don't want to tell me what happened here it's alright."

Liam didn't say anything. He sat in the passenger seat of some kind of car. A soldier had found him kneeling next to a child's corpse, and invited him for a ride. Liam almost shot him. But his suit didn't look like the ones he had seen. Supposedly, this man's employers offered the capacity for revenge.

He had been running his finger over the pistol's lettering. It was still ingrained with dried blood after three hours of silence and working his fingernails into the recesses. Apparently that silence had been too long for the driver, because he had decided to try and fill it. Liam preferred the man standing up in the back of the trunk, operating a gigantic gun. Whom never said a thing, just stood there and watched the horizon, with Rache admiring on the peripheral.

The driver kept talking, kept pushing through uncomfortable silences that marked the points where Liam was supposed to respond, while he tried once again to comprehend the wording on the acquired pistol. Auctoritas. It was in some language he did not recognize. He noticed the driver stopped talking.

"I don't know how you managed to survive against a whole detachment of 'em. If you knew what kind of stories the boys had come up with, you'd feel proud and dirty all at the same time. They respect you, you know that son? It's damned impressive, considering you've been here all of three days and haven't said a word to anyone. I'd love to have you aboard, and I wish I had eight more men like you. What do you think, want to get back at those commie Realm bastards?"

After staring for a full minute, Liam nodded. The man took back his proffered hand, but seemed to accept it.

"And it just so happens I have your first assignment right here!" He picked up a folder from his desk and offered it. "Straight from my command. There's an issue in Europe: it seems one of our operatives is being hunted by a 'government' mercenary. Ever been?"

Scene 7

His eyes slid open drunkenly. An inch from his nose was a savage beast's muzzle.

Daved panicked and pushed the monster away, jumping up to his feet. Shit, what the fuck was that!?

It was a dog. Daved caught his breath and laughed, while several pains let themselves be known throughout his body, and he noticed blood on his hands. None of it seemed too serious, and, in any event, he couldn't do much about it without first his supplies.

Looking around, he saw slight rises rolling across the terrain. The one in his immediate vicinity had a large depression through the middle of it, as if a giant had come along and scooped up the earth, leaving tilled soil behind. Daved wondered at how that had occurred, walking to peer through the sizable sideways crater. He saw that the remnants of his plane were impaled into the side of the next hill onwards, one wheel leg bent haphazardly with the wheel still rolling. He hoped military insurance could cover that.

Moth went to the wreckage in order to recover his supplies. The dog watched him while he tried to figure out the immense geographic equations necessary to guess where he had been supposed to land. That was where he would find further direction, and some warm food. He came up with a solution after due thought: he would walk north. That was discovered after south and west were ruled out by the ocean, and east by the mountains, which he'd seen from his overhead prospective. Now which way was north?

He slung his now filled pack over his shoulders, clipped a light automatic weapon of his own design to his side, and started in a right angle from the sun's path. The dog followed him.

Blood. Sweet-smelling blood. Meat.

Sound! Noise. Ground shaking. Meat gone. Go, look. Metal, cold, inedible. Prey! Prey near metal! Prey with metal-thrower.

Wait. Watch.

Daved had been walking for hours in a general northerly direction. He had seen one road, with no other signs of civilization. It had been a rather large road, running east-to-west. There was no guarantee of anything nearby on a road like that, and so he had continued past it. The rolling hills had been replaced by a mostly flat, slightly forested terrain which provided comfortable shade from the hot sun.

Now that sun was lying lazily on the horizon, about to drop below it, and Moth willed it onwards. Sweat dripped down his forehead and clouded his vision. He noticed the dog was panting along with him. He remembered hearing how fucking hot it was in Spain.

He thought back to the day the nukes were said to have hit, the war begun and ended in less than an hour. He hadn't seen the white flash himself, or he wouldn't be around to think about it; he had been safe with his family, which consisted of two teenaged parents he barely remembered in an underground bomb-shelter. His parents had died unfortunate deaths not long after the armored bunker reopened. They had both been assigned to scouting duties, and had died discovering a nest of scum. An elder of the time, a leader, had tried to comfort the one remaining Moth by telling him how much good his parents had done. That hadn't worked, and Daved had stolen away one night. And now he was in fucking Europe. Great things.

He had survived on his own quite well. It was interesting, really, how much shit he managed to get himself into and right back out of again. His luck ran that way. Eventually, an army had found him. Moth wasn't exactly famous at that point, that hadn't come until much later. But the Captain had seen something in him, some kind of potential, and he had decided to adopt Moth into his family. For a while he had used the surname Ripley, while he proved to be "the best damned soldier" General Ripley had to offer. He had even fostered a son himself, with a forgotten whore. That son had been given to Ripley's grandfather to raise when Moth once again moved on, over a dispute with his son's grandfather.

The whole hero shit had started after he left the Army. He had heard the stories. They said he had grown up from a mysterious past, had been adopted by one of the most famous Generals in present history, had done amazing things, won amazing fights, wars even. Hell, it was made for the tabloids, had it been three hundred years prior. Especially with the scandals over his son. He had just fought when he needed to fight. The idea of him being some kind of myth was just because he stayed young.

Most people couldn't boast the lengthy memory he had: even the few human fiends that were still sane, their memories were faded at best, mad ramblings at worst. Hell, he had a memory from before the war, granted not far foreward. He had only been a child then, although he wasn't sure how old, and it had been before he had apparently stopped growing. That set in once he was an adult. To a person like him, age and dates meant less than the epitaph on a politician's gravestone.

Abruptly he realized it was night. Finally. The heat of the day had been replaced by a mild chill, much more comfortable. Moth laid his pack down beside a tree, where the dog sat down, and took a load off, himself. He unstrapped his gun from his hip and checked the grenade at his belt.

The explosive reassured him. It wasn't the best way to go, but it sure as hell beat most of the ways things wanted to kill you nowadays, and sleeping was the worst spot for such to find you in. Not to mention, they sure as fuck hesitated when they saw a sleeping man with a grenade, a lot more than they would if they saw one without. Leaning back and putting his arms behind his head, he settled to sleep.

End

Of

Part One

Beginning of the story