Monster Island(50)

There were over a thousand of them, when last I took a peek.

Mael pushed open a door and they stepped through into a spray of colored light. Stained glass windows high overhead showered the radiance down upon them, while massive Gothic arches invited them to press on. Mael stopped and turned to face Gary.The lot of them are in poor shape, lad. Starving-holed up so tight they can’t get out again, or just too terrified to go out scavenging for food.

“So just let them starve to death!”

That’d be cruel. I’m all about mercy, lad. The human race is done for, nobody can question that. It’s taking its time on the way out, though. Imagine how much suffering I’ll save. Here!

Mael had found a glass display case exactly like the hundreds of others Gary had seen. With the help of two mummies he opened it and lifted out a sword. It had been beautifully wrought, once, though over the centuries it had corroded to a dull green patina and the blade had fused with its scabbard. The hilt was worked in the shape of a howling Celtic warrior. Mael twisted it through the air in a wide cutting motion.

She’s not the Answerer, but she’ll do.

“You’re going to kill people with that?”

Mael’s head sagged forward.Try not to be so literal. I just want to be kitted out properly. You won’t help me, then. It’s not ‘your thing’. Very well. Will you be playing at being my enemy, then? Will I need to go through you to complete the great work? Or will you stand aside and leave me to it?

Gary entertained the notion for a moment but it was pointless. He was no fighter-and he had seen how strong Mael was despite appearances. Mael’s dark energy was enormous and powerful, too. It looked like a sunless planet, vast and round and self-contained, something so big and deadly it had its own gravitational field. “I… I don’t suppose I could stop you. I can try to talk you out of it.”

There’s no debate, Gary. This is what we are.Uamhas. There’s good in this world and there’s evil, and we’re evil. Now either come with me or leave me be, lad. There’s work to do.

Using the sword like a cane Mael lurched forward through the Medieval exhibit and passed into the museum’s great hall. Not knowing what else to do Gary followed, his mind reeling.

Saying no had been his immediate reaction and he knew he should stick with it but Mael’s conviction was a powerful argument on its own. Gary had come to the Druid with his questions, after all. Did he have a right to pick and choose among the answers, discarding the ones he didn’t like?

It wasn’t as if Gary felt any particular allegiance to the living. They’d treated him shabbily enough. He remembered the moment of recognition he’d had when he first saw Noseless on Fourteenth street, when they had seemed like reflections of one another. Gary had called himself a monster, then, and meant it.

He’d spent so much time trying just to survive. He’d made himself a dead freak because it seemed like the only way forward. He’d tried to befriend Dekalb to get himself out of a bad situation. Yet what was he existing for? Simply keeping on had seemed like a good enough motivation before but now-if he did nothing with this second chance he’d been given, had he deserved it in the first place?

He didn’t believe any of this crap about judgment and retribution. But maybe there were other reasons for signing on. Revenge, for one. Destroying all humans included killing Ayaan, and Dekalb too. The f*ckers hadn’t listened to him-they’d just shot him like a dog, not even giving him a chance.

Then there was the hunger in Gary’s belly, a wild animal in there kicking at the walls in thwarted need.

Working for Mael he’d get plenty of fresh meat.

“How are you going to start?” Gary asked, timidly.

Mael stood framed by the open doors of the Met, the sunlight streaming around his leathery flesh.I’ve begun already, he said, and stepped out into the day. Gary followed and found uncountable eyes staring right at him.

The entirety of Fifth Avenue was clogged with the dead. Their bodies filled the space like a forest of human limbs. In clothes dulled of color by dirt and time, with hair torn or matted or falling out they became a single entity, a featureless mass. White, black, Latino, male, female, decrepit skeletons and freshly slaughtered corpses. Thousands of them. Slaver dripped from their sagging jaws. Their yellow eyes turned in terrifying concert to look upon the Druid. They awaited his command. Mael had assembled an army-he must have been calling them the whole time Gary was asking his questions and miring himself in moral dilemmas.