24

Never Gonna Give You Up

“The world makes a lot more sense now than it did before.”
I find myself more often with this thought at random times during the day or night while
I’m doing various activities to stay alive. When I first heard myself think it, I thought I was going
insane, or that I was some sort of horrible person. I’ve had a lot of time to argue with the voice
in my head when it tells me that. But Ines’s situation has forced me to this conclusion, and it’s
made me rethink the entire concept and reason for trying to get to Ashborne. I was always one
for questioning ‘why’ about myself, doing a lot of introspection, and that seems to be a trait I
haven’t lost along with everything else.
“The world makes more sense now…”
I’ve broken this idea down to mean that I appreciate how the entire world seems far
less complex now than it did before it went to hell in a hand basket. There are fewer
interpersonal complications now than before – no world, national, or local politics; no fighting
with Mom and Dad after coming in past curfew; no one sleeping with her sister’s husband or his
brother’s wife; no consumers suing a corporation because someone stuck their head into a
microwave and somehow got cancer from it; no governments wasting taxpayer money on
research of Swedish massages for tired bunnies; none of that junk. The world – my world,
Ines’s world – has been reduced to a single, basic, fundamental element: survival, survival by
any means necessary.
I’ve wondered what this says about me, that I feel more suited for this world than the
one before it. Maybe I feel this way because I am too simple-minded and straightforward for
the intricacies of the “normal” world. I remember reading Pride and Prejudice for the first time
a few years back and remarking how ridiculous that era was, with all its customs and social
rules, the way people never seemed to speak their minds and were always hiding behind this
weird, collective gasp whenever something unexpected happened. I would never have lasted
long back then, but then it was pointed out to me that we had our own weird social customs
and rules. It was a “class” thing, I was told. The whole idea of “class” was stupid to me, too
(along with a great many other things), but it always seemed to be so intertwined with
everything that I wondered if somehow I was the one out of place in my thinking. Couldn’t we
all just be people living together instead of twisting everything into this grotesque, overthought
blob of culture?
Or was it that I was one of the few left with a sound mind, something we continually
referred to as “common sense.” The arguments for that one are pretty good. There were too
many examples of how that former world was severely lacking common sense. I can remember
one time this kid tried to kill a police officer, so the officer shot him and killed him, but
somehow the police were to blame, and somehow this was about police racism – except that
the kid and the officer were both black, and somehow that didn’t factor in. Or this other time
when someone wrote a blog saying that she was outraged that people were allowed to go Black
Friday shopping on Thanksgiving, and that people who did so were un-American and should be
deported. That word – outraged – there was a lot of that back then. A lot of outrage over
stupid stuff, usually about something some politician or celebrity said, whether it was
something that was idiotic (why was anyone ever surprised by that?) or something not
politically correct, or something that might possibly be construed as potentially offensive to the
other party simply because they don’t belong to that party. Basically, they used what was
referred to as inflammatory rhetoric, and so then there was “outrage.” Coincidentally, this
same word was also applied to events such as the terrorist attacks on September 11 th, a mother
who cooked her infant child in the microwave (which probably gave them both cancer), and
let’s not forget the continual outrage for the ongoing genocides that routinely took place in
African countries. Outrage was a blanket word used to describe all manner of things that
ranged from awful, evil practices to things that just annoyed a few particular people. Forgive
me for noticing, but these things are not all the same. No one cared about that, though,
because there was always a way to rationalize it, and that way almost always began by
shedding whatever common sense inhibited that rationalization.
Lately, though, as Ines and I have wandered from one abandoned neighborhood to the
next across these formerly amber waves of grain, I’ve thought of a third option. Maybe that
world was never meant to make sense to me because it was all going to change soon enough
anyway. God or Fate or whoever is out there knew that I would find myself stuck here, fighting
to survive and thinking through some tough choices, and it decided that I would be born with a
preemptive personality that made me ready for this. It wasn’t as though I was born out of time
or place, or that I didn’t belong on this earth. I just had to live long enough and wait around to
fully come into my own.
Knowing what happened to put me here, that sounds terrible to even consider…all the
death, destruction, and suffering that put the world in this sorry state. I said earlier that the
world went to hell in a hand basket – so was I destined to live in hell for the rest of my life?
Was that why Fate made me this way? I’ve no doubt that I was made for this – my life’s story
comes to that conclusion on its own. But that still doesn’t answer my questions. What do I do
about Ashborne? Do I really belong there? And if I don’t, what does that mean for Ines?
I’m not entirely sure about any of it. But we’ll have to figure that out later.
We have to escape the monsters first.

--------------------

Our faces turn pale, and from the first floor comes the sound of shattering wood as the
entranceway doorframe is ripped away. Instinctively, I check to make sure a round is
chambered in my sidearm, and then my sword is out as well. My ribs renew their acute
throbbing just from the prospect of having to fight this thing. There has to be a way out of here
without it catching us.
Both of us run into the hall, looking around to make sure we don’t accidentally charge
headlong into it. From the noise it’s making, I can tell it’s close to the front of the building, so I
look the other direction and straightaway make for a door that sits beneath what used to be an
emergency exit sign.
To my amazement, Ines doesn’t follow when I try to run.
“We have to kill it!”
I’m not even sure how that’s possible, given both of our current states, but she has a
point – we’ve run this far, and it’s followed us, so we clearly have no hope of evading it for long
on foot. We have to make a stand.
“Okay,” I acquiesce, hearing the footsteps getting closer. “You go out the back and I’ll
try to keep it from getting up the stairs.”
The creature makes another bellow – it’s right at the bottom of the stairwell. Ines is not
on-board with my plan.
“NO! He is here for me! We can use that!”
The complaints I have against that statement are far too numerous to voice at that time
and place, not the slightest of which being that I’m not even sure this thing has a gender at all,
but there’s no time for me to protest. She pulls out her own weapon and runs for the stairs,
peering over the railing. I follow, moving more slowly, and cursing under my breath for it.
Apparently, what she sees is alarming enough that she steps back immediately, and she runs
back the other way, shouting for me to follow.
“Get behind it when it comes up!” she yells. She runs into the room we were just in,
directing me to the room directly across the hall. It’s tight – the room is filled with the ruins of
the collapsed roof, so there’s hardly any room for me to hide as I tuck myself into a small hole
in the debris just out of sight. I take my position just in time; the Harvester smashes through
the staircase railing, clawing its way up the last of the space, and I’m extremely alarmed by the
speed at which it ascended to this floor. It catches Ines’s scent in the span of a heartbeat and
thunders down the hall, shaking the boards beneath my feet. It passes so close to me that I
swear I can feel its huffing, moisture-laden breath. A drop of the slime secreted from its
tentacles flies off and lands on my cheek.
Ines screams from the other room (whether its purposeful to get its attention or a
reflexive yelp of fear isn’t clear, but perhaps it’s both), and the huge beast lumbers in,
eviscerating that doorframe just like it did on the ground floor entrance. I can see past it to
Ines, who turns and runs.
“NOW!” she cries to me.
To my shock, she leaps out of the window on the far side of the room, and I bolt from
my hiding spot. The creature stops in front of the window, and I realize what Ines’s plan was all
along. We might not be able to damage it with weapons, but a fall from a four-story building
could do the trick. With all the might and weight I can muster in my injured state, I steel myself
for the inevitable pain and launch myself at the monster’s back. My body hits it, and it
stumbles forward, a surprised gurgle emanating from deep within its abnormally muscular
torso. Pain shoots through my side, and I’m reacquainted with the difficulty of breathing, but I
can’t stop just yet.
It starts to turn, still half-staggering, and I throw my weight forward again, narrowly
missing having my head removed by one of the two massive, swinging, bone-spiked arms. My
sword pierces the chest, adding a stabbing wound to my shove, and it finally topples out the
fourth-floor window where Ines vanished just moments before. Right away, I check to see the
damage, but my heart pauses to take in the view of the Harvester digging all its limbs into the
exterior of the structure, halfway down the building. Ines is clinging onto hand and footholds to
the left, waving to me.
“Hurry!” she beckons, also alarmed at the sight of the unfallen monster.
I take as deep a breath as I can manage, then swing out to join her. She nimbly climbs
down to an open, third-floor window, and I less-nimbly follow. The Harvester’s repeated grunts
are set to its climbing efforts, each nasally, huffing emote in tempo with the sound of the foot-
long bone spikes piercing the brick and hauling the massive body upward toward us with
frightening agility.
We make it through the door of the room just as it enters the window behind us,
roaring as it crashes through the brick, wood, and plaster. I reflexively slam the door as I exit,
but that goes flying off its hinges in pieces a few seconds later.
Ines is ahead of me toward the stairs, but she stops and backpedals in panic as I
approach, my breaths in and out in painful wheezes. There’s red leaking from my side again.
“Stairs…gone…!” Ines gasps in distress, also short of breath. The Harvester barrels down
the hall toward us, and I do the only other thing I can think of. Ines must be thinking the same
thing, because we both sprint further down to the end of the hall toward the open, gaping door
to the derelict elevator shaft. The elevator door sits loosely half-open, and I shove it the rest of
the way as Ines leaps across, her hands finding whatever secure holds there are. I swing around
just like with the window on the same side, ignoring my injuries and shoving the elevator door
closed with my foot. The slam from the other side shakes the shaft and dents the door inward,
followed by an enraged bellow and another slam. The door won’t hold much longer.
“Up or down?!” Ines yells to me.
As I spy the lone cable that hangs from above, wedged tightly in the damaged motorized
pulley system, I have an idea. It’s a bad one. It’s nearly as bad of an idea as driving off a cliff on
a motorbike strapped with explosives. Still, that one worked unexpectedly well, so…
“Up!”
We begin climbing as fast as we can, knowing that we’ll never match the climbing speed
of the Harvester once it enters the shaft. A groan fills the square space, and I realize a second
later that it’s mine. My ribs and gashed side really, really, hurt. Several feet below, the
Harvester blasts through the door, and I nearly lose my grip on the small, cylindrical handhold.
My other hand holds my sword, which means I can’t let go – at least, not yet. I’m not high
enough.
“Shoot it!” I say to Ines. She pulls out her gun and empties the magazine into the top of
the beast with impressive accuracy while I continue to climb. The Harvester bellows in rage but
flails about, falling partway down the shaft. When Ines runs out of rounds a few seconds later,
it recovers and resumes its climb.
“Get ready,” I breathe, having reached her position.
“This seems like a bad idea,” she says, putting her opinion on-record. I swallow. She’s
not wrong at all. I brace myself for even more pain.
“Get downstairs as fast as you can,” I tell her. Then, I release my handhold and snatch
my Bowie knife from my belt as I tilt forward.
“MATT!”
 Her scream mingles with mine as I drop, making sure the leg opposite my stinging side is
first. It doesn’t have a clue I’m coming until I make contact. The impact feels like I’ve run
straight into a cement wall, and my head is whiplashed downward so that my forehead smacks
against its shoulder. I see stars and feel something warm on my leg, expecting the second
impact with the ground any moment and wondering if I’ll even be conscious enough to feel it.
With knife and sword in hand, I raise my arms to shield my head, finding out just then that my
sword is gone and I’m left with only my knife.
That’s when my eyes come back into focus, showing that not only have we NOT dropped
all the way down the shaft like I planned, but my entire leg is now lodged inside the mouth and
throat of the Harvester! It flails its many smaller arms, and the tentacles slap at me continually.
The esophageal muscles quiver and contract as it chokes on my calf, knee, and thigh – my foot
sloshes around in its stomach bile. Yet somehow, it remains perched where it was, wedged
within the elevator shaft right above the third floor.
My knife descends once, three times, five times, trying to hack away at one of the two
mandibular jaws on either side of my leg before it can clamp down and sever it from my hip.
Luckily, it’s more interested in expelling me from its mouth than it is in consuming me – the
huge jaws are easily large enough to take in my entire lower half if it so chooses.
It thrashes side-to-side, and my shoulder slams into the wall with a loud pop; my left
arm stops working. My foot feels a hot stinging as the Harvester vomits my leg out, and I stab
my knife into its chest to keep from sliding off and falling down to the ground floor. It roars
furiously, one of its jaws still loosely attached to the side of its face. Several of its tentacles
reach out to grab me, holding me in place as one of the big arms dislodges and reels back,
preparing to turn me into a human shish kebab.
The next moment, a screech from above draws our attention a split-second before Ines
makes her impact, sliding down the singular cable. She hits and drives her own knife into the
beast’s neck, and this final blow causes it to lose its grip. The three of us fall three stories
down, ricocheting off the walls and each other. In the midst of the rapid descent, I spy my
short sword, which has somehow become lodged in the Harvester’s left leg, driven in almost to
the hilt.
We hit the ground with an incredible, excruciating crash. A bloodcurdling scream of
agony reaches my ears, and this time it isn’t mine. Ines’s foot has somehow become wedged
into one of the holds in the elevator shaft, leaving her dangling upside down just above the
ground floor as blood drips from the open wound on her head. Gathering my bearings, I half-
roll, half-crawl to my right, evading the spike-tipped limb that the Harvester swings in my
direction. I scramble to my feet, seeing Ines drop out of the corner of my eye, clutching her
ankle. I can’t begin to describe how much I hope it isn’t a compound fracture, knowing how
likely it is that I’ll be severely disappointed.
The Harvester rises, trembling with pain and fury. Blood pours from its numerous
wounds, and it appears that it lost its jaw (along with most of the right side of its face)
somewhere in the shaft above. It lashes out, swinging at anything and everything around it, the
eyeless, half-head and mouth belching anger, blood, and bile. I spit out some of my own fluids,
grit my teeth, and charge forward.
It hears me coming and swings, but I duck under and wrap my fingers around the hilt of
my sword, yanking on it. It takes two good pulls before it comes out, but when it does, the
Harvester bellows and goes down to one knee, balancing on one of its big arms. It swings back
with its other arm, catching me in the sternum and sending my flying across the room into an
old couch, which topples back. It’s on me in the next moment, dragging itself along with its bad
leg leaving a glistening, crimson trail. I roll away just in time as both spikes pierce the bottom of
the couch and then rip it in half, hurling both halves at me. They crash into the wall and stay
stuck there, and I dive under several more swings, almost rolling right into Ines.
The incredible woman is limping forward, jaws set, teeth clenched, my dropped and
forgotten pistol in one hand, her knife in the other. The Harvester approaches, sensing Ines
close by, and in my panic, I attempt to beat her to it before she gets herself killed. With all my
strength, my working arm hurls my sword at the monster, cutting off one of its tentacles before
the blade impales its right shoulder. It staggers, nearly going down, and Ines makes her move.
She leaps with her good leg atop its shoulders, digging her knife into its neck and hanging on.
While I race forward to aid her, she jams the barrel of the 9mm pistol into what’s left of the
Harvester’s mouth, firing every round in the magazine as fast as her fingers can squeeze the
trigger, letting out a furious battle cry as streaks of crimson add color to her tight, manic
countenance.
My hand finds the hilt of my sword again, ripping it out just like before. The tentacles
and many arms are removed as fast as I can spot them in motion, and I’m able to block one of
the huge spikes with one arm. It’s getting weaker. The other limb swings upward, just barely
missing Ines’s face as she tosses the gun aside, stabbing with her knife from where she sits atop
its broad, meaty shoulders. One of the smaller limbs that I haven’t removed yet reaches up and
grabs her injured ankle; she screams and is pulled down, and then I take out that arm as well.
She stabs it in its good leg right above the knee, her blade digging into tendons as its
kneecap becomes useless. It drops down, finally, and my sword finds its place several times in
its back. I hack away at what little there is of a neck, where the short, dome-like head sits
between the thick shoulders, and eventually, the blade finds something hard and sticks in. Ines
joins me, and after a few more exhausted strikes, the once-mighty Harvester flops down and
stops twitching.
My legs refuse to work, so I roll off and lay there, gasping and gritting my teeth through
the hurt. Even though my mind and heart are calling out to Ines, thinking only of her well-
being, my body doesn’t respond right away, so I’m left to lie there and recover my ability to
move, waiting for what seems like forever before I’m able to even change the direction of my
gaze. With an effort that borders on the unfathomable, I pull off one of my gloves and wipe the
fluids away from my eyes with my relatively clean hand, then turn my head toward the
Harvester, my lungs yanking in a breath of dread. It’s still moving! How is that even possible?
No, it’s not moving. The motion is being caused by Ines. She’s still on top of it. I groan
and roll over, pushing off the ground with my fists. Somehow, by a miracle that I’ll never be
able to explain, I am able to stand, and when I turn around, my eyes unwillingly take in a
haunting sight.
Ines straddles the carcass of the Harvester, her entire front painted a deep, hellish red
by the gore of our foe as she screams incessantly, plunging my short sword again and again into
its mutilated flesh. Her shrieks of “No, no, no!” reach my dulled ears; her clear tears turn red as
they run down her bloody cheeks and lips.
 By the time I’m able to reach her, the last of her adrenaline-fueled vengeance has
abated, and she’s left clutching the embedded handle, her shoulders lightly shaking since she’s
now too overcome with exhaustion to even sob. She won’t let go of it, so I just put my hand on
hers – mine are covered with red, too, and I’m sure my face is similar in condition to hers. We
sit there together, taking heavy lungful after lungful of putrid, hot air, looking blankly at each
other, taking in the sight of the creatures we’ve both become. Before Ines was taken, she told
me that I had been altered by this world, hardened, corrupted. Now, I recognize what she saw
in me because I see the beginnings of those same things in the brown eyes staring back at me,
staring from within a face coated in turmoil, loss, and dripping crimson.
There’s another element in there as well: fear. There is fear in her of what she knows
she’s turning into; I wordlessly promise as I gaze back at her to pull her back from the edge.
Whether I belong in Ashborne or not, I will reach it not for my own sake, but for that of Ines.
The longer we’re out here fighting, the more of her humanity she’ll lose. I don’t know how
much more of it she has left, but I’m certain she has more of hers than I have of mine.
Ashborne is her only hope of saving what’s left, and maybe…maybe, if we reach Ashborne,
there might somehow be hope for me, too.
We open our eyes and take short, scared breaths with a start. We nearly fell asleep
there, sitting in the remains of the Harvester as tired as we are. But the sound from off in the
distance, the piercing call from far off, tells us that the Harvester wasn’t alone – it was just
farther ahead than the rest of its pack.
Scar-Face is on our trail, and he’s getting closer.
Ines and I lock eyes – we have to get moving, and fast.