The Unfortunate Master Of The Apocalypse

Chapter 5: Last Straw

He heard the room before he saw it, glasses clinking, a ripple of laughter, somebody's voice pitched too loud for the size of the space. He had gone home early because he wasn't feeling well only to realise that he had left his house key at his desk. The plan had been to get his key and go. The plan died the moment he pushed through the double doors. The entire staff was packed into the lobby, drinks in hand, a projector throwing case photos onto the far wall. He recognized every image. A timeline he had assembled himself, one late night at a time. Paper nobody had asked to see until it was too late to ignore.

The director of Child Welfare Services stood in front of the mic with a plaque in her hands. “What you're looking at,” she said, gesturing at the screen, “is eleven children who are safe tonight from a ring of abusive homes because somebody in this department refused to accept a coincidence at face value. That person is--”

The director turned and faced the crowd. Ethan's chest tightened, he wasn't prepared to receive any award.

“Harrold Richmond.”

Everyone in the room started applauding. Harrold took the plaque from her. “Thank you. Thank you everyone. But this kind of outcome doesn't happen from one person's hunch. It happens when a whole team keeps pulling a thread long after everyone else has decided there's nothing there. I'm honoured to share this with them.”

Ethan stood rooted where he was.

“That was me. That was supposed to be me.” He said to no one in particular.

Rosa nudged his elbow. “Easy,” she murmured.

Across the room, Harrold's gaze landed on him. It stuck a beat too long to be accidental. A flicker of surprise crossed his face, then smoothed over.

“In fact,” Harrold continued, raising the plaque toward the back wall, “one of my teammates is here tonight. Ethan, come out from wherever you're hiding.”

Nobody applauded. Ethan didn't move.

“He was the one who ran the early cross-references on this case,” Harrold went on, warmly. “Sharp instincts. Good notes. Though he does have a habit of confusing raising a flag with running the whole operation himself.”

The room laughed.

“He cares. That's not a criticism,” Harrold said. “Some of our best people get ahead of themselves once they've had a win. Nobody's saying the drive isn't real. But what a caseworker has to learn is the difference between doing good work and needing to be seen doing it.”

A ripple of agreement went through the crowd. One or two people offered Ethan a sympathetic look, as though he were the one who had made the evening awkward.

“That's on us, as supervisors,” Harrold said, turning back to the room, “to help our subordinate find that line before ambition runs past experience.”

The laughter that followed was warmer than the first round.

Harrold turned back to the director without a second glance. “Shall we take one for the camera?”

She stood with him. The applause that followed was the loudest of the night. A camera went off twice. People were on their feet.

Ethan stood at the back of the room that had already decided what it wanted to believe, and not one person turned to look at him when he left the room, went to his desk, grabbed his key and turned for the exit.

Outside, the evening was making its regular noise. Ethan walked home with the plaque that should have carried his name settling wrong in his head. He had every reason to turn around, go back up, say out loud what he hadn't said in the room. The truth. But who would believe him? His own supervisor just dismissed him in front of everyone. He shook his head. It didn't matter. Eleven kids were sleeping safely tonight. Whether his name was attached to it didn't matter. He had spent three weeks making sure it wasn't about him. He wasn't going to ruin that tonight just to set the record straight. He was still carrying that thought when he passed an electronics showroom. The television in the window had stopped looping its usual advertisement, the one he had walked past every day without really seeing. Tonight he did. A woman in a blazer had taken over the screen, sitting behind a desk that wasn't the regular set. Behind her, red letters slapped together by someone who clearly hadn't had time to make them look official. A photo of what used to be a man filled part of the screen. Early twenties, maybe. The skin under his eyes had sunk and gone gray. His shirt was ripped up the center, hanging off him in strips. One shoulder was exposed, the injuries visible. The sound was muted but the caption was bold enough to read.

BREAKING: GOVT CONFIRMS GHOUL OUTBREAK BEYOND CONTAINMENT

NATIONWIDE LOCKDOWN

DO NOT APPROACH INFECTED

STAY INDOORS

DEFEND YOURSELF IF CONTACT OCCURS

A handful of people had stopped beside him on the sidewalk, all looking at the TV, reading it again as if the words might rearrange themselves into something less alarming. He stood there long enough that his own reflection began looking back at him, laid over the newscaster's face like a second exposure.

He continued walking, his mind still turning over the broadcast. The government had put out warnings before but this was different. Defend yourself? Things must be getting out of hand.

He had walked a few blocks and turned onto the street that led to his apartment when something came out of the space between two parked cars, fast enough that his brain hadn't finished registering it before it was already on him. It hit him mid-stride with weight and speed his body hadn't prepared for. They went down hard onto the pavement, his shoulder taking the brunt, the air gone from his chest in one clean shock. Ethan got a good look at it. The same appearance as the sick man on the news. A ghoul. Its hand closed around his collar and hauled him half off the ground. Ethan understood, somewhere underneath the panic, that whatever this was, it wasn't going to stop on its own. But he didn't have anything to defend himself with. The news had said to defend yourself. He only had his hands and they were useless against a grip like that.

Ethan got a good look at its face. The expression showed that it was aware of what it was doing. And it was enjoying it. But he couldn't just give up. He had too much left to do. The eleven kids were safe tonight. But there were more. Even though people like Harrold got to steal the spotlight while he worked himself off behind the scenes. His work still mattered. He was saving the world one kid at a time. He tried to pull free but it proved useless. The ghoul brought its face closer, mouth opened.

Then a transparent wall came out of nowhere and slammed the ghoul pinning Ethan sideways before its teeth ever reached his throat. Ethan hit the ground on his hands and knees and looked up. His rescuer stepped out from the mouth of an alley. An older man, gray creeping into his hair, one hand still raised toward the ghoul struggling under the wall.

“Get up,” the man said. “Get up, now, come on.”

Ethan felt it before he understood what he was feeling. A pull, faint as a scent on the wind, coming off the man the way mirage rose off the asphalt on a sunny day. Then his mind tried to take a photo of it. He didn't know what he was doing. Just that it felt good. It felt like he had been doing it for years, even though it was his first time. Something in his chest lit up as soon as the scent registered. Ethan got to his feet. Instinctively, he stretched his arm out. He could see the invisible wall forming.

“You've got the same talent as me.” He said it like it explained everything. “Great. That's good. Means we can actually put this thing down together instead of me doing it alone.”

Talent. What did that even mean? Ethan didn't know what was happening, except that he had powers. And the man across from him seemed comfortable with it, like it was something that happened every day.

The ghoul started dragging itself upright. Ethan knew he had to do something. And for the first time that evening, he thought maybe he could actually do it. Put that thing down. It was different from the disappointment he had felt earlier, when everything slipped. This time he had hope that he would put the ghoul down. But the hope wasn't his.

He turned his hand toward the ghoul. The wall slammed into it, pushing it back until it hit a concrete wall.

“Good. Hold it like that while I destroy the heart.” The man moved toward the ghoul with a knife in hand.

Ethan tried to hold it. The strange pull in his chest started fading. The scent started to disappear. He was becoming empty, like he had been when the ghoul grabbed his collar.

The man was already by the ghoul. Just as he was about to stab the heart, the wall disappeared. The ghoul grabbed the knife before it could make contact, threw it across the floor, grabbed the man by the neck, and slammed him into the concrete wall. The man went limp but still alive. The ghoul picked up the unconscious man, threw him over its shoulder, and walked away without giving Ethan a look. Ethan stood there, hand still raised, waiting for something that wasn't coming. He watched the ghoul and the man disappear into the dark, one foot at a time. Then everything went quiet. He could hear his own heart beating.

He didn't know how long he stood there. His body was still and his mind was chaos. A ghoul had attacked him and taken the man who was saving him, and he could do nothing. He had it. He turned his hand over like the answer might be written on his palm. It was right there. Whatever that was. The man called it a talent. Maybe he didn't push hard enough. Maybe if he had told the man he wasn't sure, told him it might not hold maybe things would have gone differently and the man would still be here. He had been too confident. Maybe that had always been the problem.

He thought of Harrold's hand going up for the plaque. He thought of the folder still in his bag, the work he had done singlehandedly, his name nowhere on the report. Maybe that's why it went to Harrold and not him. Maybe some part of him had always known he couldn't finish the things he started. Maybe he wasn't enough. He stood in the empty street, hand still half-raised, waiting for the wall to come back the way it had the first time. It didn't come back. Then he felt a headache on the front of his brain. So intense he found it hard to stand still. It pounded like a drumbeat inside his skull. He staggered forward and fell, grabbing his head. He tasted blood. Something dripped down the side of his head. He touched it and it was blood.

His vision started to blur and he looked around and he was back to the present. Back in the street dying. The cold sat over him, or in him, he still couldn't tell which, hadn't been able to tell since the street rose up to meet the side of his face. His mind settled on that memory. The night he first awakened his talent. The events of the day. It turned the memory over once more, like something was telling him that was who he was. The man who let someone else take what he was owed. And now it had happened again. The group left him to die. It was questioning him. Would he let it go the way he let it go with Harrold? He didn't need to be a failure anymore. He could be strong. He could get back at all the people who had wronged him. Especially the people who left him to die. Somewhere deep inside of him, past the memory, he felt something that had been soft for the longest time begin to harden.