Armageddon’s Children

TEN

ANGEL PEREZ MOVED quickly through the deserted lobby of the hotel, stepping past the trash and broken furniture, her eyes on the dilapidated stairway across the room. The lobby was in ruins, its walls stained and its carpet either torn out or worn through. Rats scurried in the walls, loud enough that she could hear them. Shattered glass littered the floor, and scraps of paper were piled up against the walls in heaps. The smell of dead things was everywhere.

She glanced around quickly, scanning the shadows. There were no feeders to be seen. A good sign.

Outside, the sounds of battle continued, drifting in through the broken windows. The intensity of the fighting was increasing, an unmistakable indication that time was running out. The compound would fall within the hour.

She could not delay or her chance at helping the children trapped inside would be gone.

She reached the stairway, a wide circular ramp with carpeted steps that were worn and soiled and a wood–capped banister that wound upward through particles of dust and ash that floated on the air like tiny insects. Ignoring the stairs, she moved past their upward march to the back wall, where a small door stood closed and locked. She checked to make certain that the lock was still intact and the magic that warded it still in place, reassuring herself that no one had discovered her secret entrance to the compound. When she found that the door was secure, she used her staff to force it open.

Inside, she closed the door behind her, retrieved the solar–powered torch she had hidden in the walls weeks earlier, and started down the narrow stairwell that led to the underground passageway. Her footsteps echoed softly in a silence broken only by the distant boom and thud of the compound battle. She reached the basement level quickly, staying alert for any sign of danger. She had managed to get in and out of the other compounds without trouble, and she wasn't about to spoil her record here.

While she had failed to convince most of the Anaheim population, there were a few–mostly women–who understood that the end was inevitable. They had listened and accepted that what she was trying to tell the others was true, and that the best that they could do now was to help Angel save the children.

Working together, they had made a plan more than two months ago in preparation for this day. When the attacks against the compound came, the children would be gathered together in a prearranged place, and Angel would come to take them away. Those among the women who chose to could go as well. Mothers and caregivers would be needed. Those who chose to could stay with their husbands and sons.

She knew that some would be undecided right up to the moment she appeared.

She knew, as well, that some would help her and some would stand in her way. All would believe they were doing the right thing.

It was the same every time; it would be the same here.

She would have preferred not have anything to do with this business. She was a Knight of the Word, and it was her mission in life to destroy the demons and those they led. But that was only half of what she had been given to do. The other half was to protect the humans the demons sought to enslave. She had found it to be the harder of the two jobs. Those she tried to help would have been happy to have her stand and die along with them, but they refused to change their minds about hiding behind their compound walls.

That left the children and the old and sick and sometimes the women, so she did what she could to help those and tried not to think about the rest. It was hard, because she knew what would happen to them. She had witnessed it over and over again. She had come upon the compounds after they had fallen; she had raided the slave camps where the survivors had been taken. She had viewed the results of the experiments the demons performed and heard the stories of the survivors. The memories were burned into her mind.

She slipped down the corridor to where a sealed door blocked her way.

Again, she tested the locks and found them secure. Satisfied, she opened the door with her staff, a swift and subtle exercise of its magic, and was through.

The corridor beyond was much broader and lit with solar–powered lamps. She was beneath the compound now, working her way toward the rooms where the children would be waiting. She could no longer hear the sounds of battle and therefore had no indication of how much time remained to her. She would have to hurry.

She followed the corridor for several hundred yards, ignoring the branching passageways and closed doors to either side. The safe room, where the children would be hidden, was ahead, buried another level down, protected by heavy steel doors and traps designed to collapse the passageway. She knew them all, and she knew how to avoid them. The demons and the once–men would not be so lucky, but in the end it wouldn't be enough to save the children and their protectors. It never was.

"Angel!"

She stopped abruptly as a woman's form emerged from the shadows ahead.

'Are they all right?" Angel asked.

Helen Rice nodded. Small, slight and full of energy, she was the leader of those who had promised to help when the day to do so arrived. Angel had met with Helen last week, warning her that it would happen soon. "We have them all together in the safe room. Almost two hundred children and a dozen women and men to shepherd them. A few others are there, too, the ones who won't allow it. I couldn't do anything about them until you came."

Angel started ahead once more, taking Helen's arm and turning her about.

"They won't be a problem. But we have to hurry. The once–men are breaking through. They'll be down here soon."

"Where are the children from the other compounds?" Helen asked, breathing hard as they practically ran down this small, dark corridor that was deliberately disguised to look as if it lacked any importance at all. "Did you get them all out?"

"Most." She tried not to think about the ones she hadn't, the ones she'd lost. "As many as I could. It wasn't easy. They're hidden up in the hills north, waiting for us."

Helen shook her head. "I can't believe this is happening. I tell myself it is, know for a fact it is, and I still can't believe it. Sweet Heaven!"

They went down a set of steps and along a second corridor that ended at a steel wall with a metal keypad recessed into its surface. Helen punched a sequence of numbers on the pad, and a set of hidden locks released. Angel pushed against the wall, which swung open far enough to allow them passage. The women stepped through into bright light and eerie silence.

Dozens of children sat cross–legged around makeshift tables on a concrete floor. The smaller children were drawing and working with puzzles. The older ones were reading. A few not quite old enough to fight at the walls or work in the nursing stations were helping the adults supervise. No one was talking in a regular tone of voice; everyone was whispering. Frightened eyes glanced up as Angel and Helen appeared through the door, fixing quickly on the former with her strange black staff.

A small clutch of women came forward, faces drawn, eyes filled with fear.

They knew.

"Is it time?" one asked.

"What do we do?" asked another.

Helen reached for the closest and squeezed her arm reassuringly. "Gather them in their safety groups and put one older child or one adult with each group. Remind them they are not to speak or make any sounds at all once we leave this room."

Those addressed broke away, spreading out across the room and summoning the children to their feet. But now a different woman came charging over, her face flushed and angry, her hands gesturing wildly. "No, no, no!" she cried out, coming right up against Helen and gripping the smaller woman by her shoulders.

"What do you think you're doing? You can't take these children out of here!"

She swung around on Angel. "This is your fault. You've caused nothing but trouble with your scare tactics and false prophecies! I'm sick of it! Who do you think you are? These aren't your children! You can't just come in here and take them away!"

She was furious, and now she was joined by several others, all of them looking as if they meant to attack her if she even moved toward the children.

Angel held her ground. "The gates are about to collapse under the weight of the attack. The enemy will be inside in minutes. When that happens, all chance of escape will be cut off. You will be sealed inside. Eventually, you will be found. You know what will happen then."

"I know what you say will happen! Anyway, I don't believe you! You'd do anything to get those children!"

"I would do anything to save them, yes." Angel kept her voice even, her gaze level.

"Get out of here! Leave us alone! We're safe right where we are! Our men will protect us from those creatures outside!"

Angel stepped right up to her and seized her by the arms. "Look in my eyes. Tell me what you see. Go on, look!"

Squirming to break free, but held fast by Angel's strong grip, the woman did as she was told. It was impossible to say what she saw there, but Angel knew what the effect would be. It was a skill she had learned when she had become a Knight of the Word, although she was the only one she knew who could do it. She pictured the worst things she had ever been witness to; she conjured the most terrible images of the most heinous acts of the demons and the once–men.

Something of that horror reflected in her eyes when she did so, and anyone looking caught a momentary glimpse of Hell.

"Oh, my God!" the woman breathed. She shrank down inside herself as if deflated; she would have fallen if Angel wasn't holding her. Her hands covered her face and tears began running down her cheeks. "Don't show me any more!

Please, please don't!"

She was shaking now, completely undone. The others who had supported her clustered about protectively, hands reaching for her, faces stricken. Angel gave the woman over to them and motioned them back. "Don't interfere further in this. Either help with the children or stand aside."

They stood aside, consoling the demoralized woman, huddling together and whispering furiously. Angel ignored them, sending Helen to those who had agreed to help in readying the children for departure. They were already standing in lines, hands joined, eyes darting this way and that as they waited for instructions. A few exchanged momentary glances with her, but no one tried to speak. She gave it a few more seconds, then moved over to reopen the section of wall that would take them to safety.

"Quietly, now," she whispered.

They went back through the hidden door, climbed the stairs to the basement level, and went down the narrow corridor to the larger, more brightly lit one beyond. Angel, in the lead, glanced back repeatedly, making sure the children and their escorts were keeping up while at the same time listening for anything that seemed out of place. She believed they had not been discovered yet, but there was no point in taking chances.

At the mouth of the corridor, she brought the procession to a halt, letting those in the rear close up the gaps between themselves and those in the front. She took a moment to scan ahead, searching for movement. The corridor seemed empty. She stepped out into the light, beckoned to those who followed her, and moved back down toward the doors and stairs that led to the abandoned hotel and the streets beyond.

She was all the way to the last door, the one that opened onto the stairwell leading up to the hotel, when she sensed the presence of the demon. It was ahead of her, waiting at the top of the stairs. She could smell its stink and feel its heat, and her stomach reacted as it always did when she was in the presence of evil–with a sudden lurch and a queasiness that threatened to bring her to her knees. She stopped where she was, waiting for the feeling to pass, for her training to reassert itself.

Behind her, the line of children and women slowed to a ragged halt. Helen appeared at her elbow. "What is it?"

Angel didn't answer. She stared at the door ahead, trying to think what she could do. The one thing she could not do was to tell Helen the truth: that they were trapped.

WHEN HER PARENTS die, Angel Perez becomes a true child of the streets. She has no family and no home. She has no one to look after her. She has no skills and no knowledge of how to forage for food and water or how to find shelter or how to survive for more than a day. She is eight years old.

But luck favors her. She manages to survive for five days by staying hidden and living on the little food and water her parents scavenged before the plague took them. She fights down her fear and spends her time trying to think what to do.

Then Johnny finds her.

His given name is Juan Gonzalez, and like her parents he has come over the border to make a better life. He seems old to her, even though he is only forty–five. His hair is wild and long, his face bearded and scarred, and his hands weathered and gnarled. But his voice is kind, and when he finds her hiding in the rubble of the home her parents made for her, he doesn't try to approach her too quickly or play the son of games that might frighten her. He simply starts talking to her, calling her little one and telling her she can't stay where she is, that it is too dangerous, that all of LA is too dangerous for an eight–year–old girl. She must come with him, he says. He has a place not far from there and she can stay there with him. He is tired of living alone anyway, and he wants someone to talk to. She is under no obligation to stay. She can leave whenever she wants, and he will never hurt her or do anything that she doesn't want him to.

She believes him. She can't say why, but she does. So she goes with him and lives with him for six years. He teaches her to forage and to cook. He teaches her how to defend herself with just her hands and feet. He teaches her how to look out for the things that might threaten her— the scavengers and the mutants and the animals. He shows her places she can run to if anything ever happens to him. He even shows her how to use the short–barreled flechette that he keeps for emergencies he hopes will never arrive. He tells her that she is the daughter he will never have, the daughter he would have wanted if things had worked out differently.

Everybody knows him. Johnny is the man, the one everyone looks up to. The street people like him for the same reasons Angel does: he is respectful of and kind to them and does what he can to help them in their struggle to survive. He watches out for them in the same way he watches out for her, and their little barrio community is tight–knit and protective. Even if the compounds will not have them, with their fear of outsiders and plague, they will have each other.

But it isn't enough to save them. The collapse of civilization has spawned all sorts of human flotsam and jetsam, and some of it eventually finds its way to their hideaway. The gang calls itself the Blade Runners and believes itself the beginning of a new order. Its members are their own law, and their allegiance is to one another and no one else. They go where they choose, and take what they want. Where they come from or how they get to LA and Angel's little community is a mystery that she later decides has more to do with perverse chance than anything else.

Johnny stands up to them when they threaten the others, bringing out the flechette, and they back down. But they hover at the fringes of the community, angry and vengeful and determined to get what they want, even if what they want is barely worth the effort. People are crazy then, just as they are crazy now.

They do insane, inexplicable things; they do them without reason or they do them for the worst of reasons. Angel knows when she sees these men that they are mad.

She knows it the same way that she knows exactly how the madness will end.

One night, Johnny doesn't come home. She knows right away that he is dead, that the Blades have found a way to catch him off guard and kill him. She knows, as well, that they will be coming next for her. She has seen how several of them look at her, and she knows what that means. She cries first because she is sad and afraid and because her life is forever changed with Johnny gone. She thinks about seeking help from some of the others. She thinks about fleeing into another pan of the city.

Then she brings out the flechette, hides herself in the crumbling warehouse next to where she and Johnny made their home, and hunkers down to wait.

The wait is short. The Blades appear around midnight, slinking out of the shadows like dogs, creeping up on the now deserted home, ten strong, armed with knives and clubs. They probably think her asleep. They probably think she does not yet realize what they have done to Johnny and will catch her unawares. They are not very good at what they are attempting, making enough noise that their approach would have awakened her even if she had been sleeping. But that doesn't make them any less dangerous or odious, and her mind is made up as to what she will do to them.

She waits until they have crowded inside, all but one who stays at the door as lookout. He leans against the frame and looks bored, glancing inside periodically as he waits for something to happen. She is upon him by then, rounding the corner of the house. The flechette fires ten rounds and cuts a twelve–foot–wide swath with each discharge. She uses the first round on the lookout, blowing him back through the doorway and into the others. She uses the next seven on the ones she catches inside, leaving them shattered and broken.

She uses the last on the one who somehow manages to get out through a window, catching up with him two blocks away and taking his head off.

She is left shaking and furious and terrified all at once, and she knows in the aftermath of her retribution that nothing in her life will ever be the same.

HER THOUGHTS OF Johnny and of that night ten years ago when she destroyed the Blade Runners were there and gone in seconds. She wished she had a weapon like the flechette now, something that could open up a path with shards of metal that would rip apart even a demon. But she had only her staff and her skills to protect more than two hundred children and a handful of women, and she was afraid it wasn't enough.

"Angel, what's wrong?" Helen hissed again.

She looked at the other woman, then at the door in front of her, and made up her mind. She had little choice. They had to either go forward or turn around and go back; all the other entrances had long since collapsed or been sealed.

Although the situation was different from the one she had faced after Johnny was killed, it felt the same. She knew what she had to do.

"Wait here," she said to Helen. "This door will be open, but don't go through it until you hear me call for you. Then bring everyone at once, as quickly as you can. Don't stop for anything. Especially not for me. Get up the stairs and out of the building; run down the street and out of the city. Go up into the hills and hide. I will find you." She paused. "If I don't come within the next few hours, head north toward San Francisco. You might find those from the other compounds on your way and you can join forces."

Helen started to speak, but Angel stopped her by taking hold of her arms and drawing her close. "Listen to me. There is something very bad at the top of the stairs. I don't think it cares about you or the children. I think it is looking for me. It won't let itself be distracted once it has me. Don't give it a reason to change its mind. Do you understand me?"

The other woman nodded, then shook her head quickly. "I can't just run away and leave you! I want to help. You've done so much for us. There must be something!"

She took a deep breath. "This isn't something you can help me with, Helen.

What waits up there is very dangerous and very powerful. It isn't anything human; it is something else. Only I can deal with it."

She released the other's arms and stepped away. "Remember what I said. Do what I told you to do."

Then she moved over to the heavy door, used the magic of her staff a second time to release its locks, pulled it wide open, and stepped through into the gloom of the narrow corridor beyond.