There were times when Tony felt he had dreamt that there had even been daylight. Something had changed. Both in Tony and in the city. A dark shadow that sucked the life out of people. Drew away their hopes and dreams. Their goodwill to their fellow men. Their compassion and empathy. Their trust.
It seemed like a lifetime ago to Tony. Nowadays people scuttled about, afraid to make eye contact with anyone. Aware that anyone could be a threat. Even those they had seen on that same street for the last five years, since It came, heads down never looking up. Nobody trusted anyone else. And with reason. Anyone could have become one of the Tainted, infected.
And Tony had been there on that night. He could have stopped it. Only five short years. But five long, long years. Five years since the shadows fell across the sun. The burden on his heart. His failure to protect the city and its citizens that he had sworn his life to serve. The shame. The guilt. The secret. Nobody who was there that night had lasted this long. Tony was the last. The weakest of all, he felt. The last three had been found swinging in Central Park. Just within sight of passers-by.
Tony had stood and watched their swaying bodies. All three in a row, along a single branch. Even at a distance Tony could recognize them still. Pale, haunted shadows of the men they had been. Pete and Cliff, he had continued to deal with them at the Department. But Gavin Heschler. No one had heard from him since that night. And now here he was, swinging from a tree branch by a short length of blood stained rope. A hundred yards beyond where any sane person would dare. They had been seen together, walking towards the Park area, earlier that evening.
Tony had gone to the scene, standing on the edge, looking in. He had felt the memories from that night surge behind his eyes. A movement had stirred in the darkness and when Tony looked back, the bodies were gone. Three broken ropes swinging back and forth.
That was before the Department had effectively been abandoned. He could have gone to the top. He had known the right people, cracked the right cases, saved the right political careers by turning a blind eye. Now Tony was back there, at the foot of the ruined City Hall. For a year now he been the sole survivor. The blasted ruins of the stone pillared facade, masked the darkness within. Crumbled columns shattered on the rising steps. The moon pierced on a jagged ruin of a wall.
He never carried a weapon anymore. Nothing to aid his defence. If one of the Tainted came for him now, it would be a release. Merciful? There were many things that would have been. But not the Taint.
Tony wasn't looking for mercy. Here where it all started. He would put his mortal torment to rest. Climbing the crumbling steps to the scene of his crime, his greatest failing. He stepped around shattered tables and twisted plastic boxes that had been part of the machine that had been City Hall. Looking up again for the last time Tony imagined what the building had looked like, all four stories of smooth stone, now gone. Totally. A ruined wall on the ground all that remained.
A few more steps and Tony was hidden in the shadows completely. The sound of his boots on the great wooden fallen doors echoed out of the darkness and Tony was gone.
Copyright ©2001 Paul Campbell
This site maintained by Paul Campbell My PGP Public Key
This Page Last Modified: Tue, 20 Feb 2001
|
|