Ascension

Max knew he couldn't pass on his infection to the doctor. The doctor was already dead and whatever Max was carrying had to pass between the living. Still it seemed to have some effect on the doctor, his throat started to smolder. The wound closed almost as soon as Max ripped away the skin, leaving behind a smoky haze

Katie lowered the shotgun to Sentry's throat and when Max pulled another fleshful away, she fired into the wound, splattering Max's face with the dark blood of the dead. If this affected Sentry in any way he didn't show it. Nor did he stop his invasion of Max's mind. Max was trying to maintain a control of his physical ability, so he could keep holding the doctor down and keep biting him. The doctor was invading other parts of Max's mind, examining and discarding the memories at lightning speed.

The partial memories of everything from Max's childhood to the fights he had with his wife were tossed out with reckless abandon, shattering his mind in a wake of destruction as Max fought to hold on for just a few more seconds until…. 'Until what? The cavalry saves the day? My only hope is that the goddamned bomb goes off and Ruben didn't even have it with him.'

Sentry caught the last part of Max's thought and focused on the bomb reference and on Ruben, immediately everything Max knew Sentry had access too.

'You stupid fool!' Sentry hissed, throwing everyone off of him and rising to his feet better than the star of a kung fu movie. Katie gave him another blast to the face that slowed Sentry down for a moment as he turned towards the open hanger door. Aubrey caught one foot, Stewart caught the other and Katie fired again, the force was enough to lay Sentry out on the floor and Max retained just enough of himself to land on the man's back once again.

Pushing to his knees, Sentry inexorably rose. Katie, out of ammunition, slammed him in the back of the head with the shotgun butt, shattering it into a thousand splinters of walnut. Max crawled up Sentry's body and grabbed the man in a wrestling move he hadn't used since college, holding him around the torso. This afforded Max a good view of Stewart, clinging desperately to Sentry's leg.

Max smiled at Stewart and looked into her eyes, searching his mind for words to express what he was feeling. In the end he merely nodded politely, unable to find what he needed to say. Stewart returned his nod and said, 'Don't worry Max, I know. You've been a good partner. I love you too.'

The group fighting Sentry had a brief moment of clarity, of knowing that they had fought when called upon and somehow understanding at the last second that the fight was over and they had won.

Ruben's bomb exploded.

There were two waves to the bomb that those in the fight noticed immediately. The first was a blast that virtually destroyed every atom of material that it came into contact with, including the physical beings of those fighting in the warehouse. The combatants were not destroyed on a spiritual plane and the fight continued at another level even as the explosion destroyed their surroundings.

The second wave created by the blast sucked material into the point of the explosion to fill the vacuum of the first wave. Unlike the airburst in Denver, this bomb created a crater, reshaping the coastline into a new harbor that was a quarter mile deep. At the edges of the explosion there was an eerily clear demarcation where the force of the bomb ended. This edge lasted for the merest of seconds before being eroded away as air swept into the void left by the explosion.

Chapter 44 — Ruben

When the apocalypse started trash service ended. For Sentry the trash creation didn't stop and the alley behind the warehouse was piled so high with rubbish, including the bodies of his failed experiments and other humans. The last body had been placed there more than two months before, so the smell was almost tolerable when Ruben opted to hide the bomb among the rubbish. His angelic voices hadn't given him any instruction on where to place it, he was getting the sense, more and more, that the advice they were giving was not with an eye towards the future, but with the best information available at the present.

He had heard nothing after getting to the clinic, and it was only with much grousing that he was able to convince them to get him to his friends. Once he gave them a new task the angels seemed to get on board with it quickly, leading him to Bill and the others, but also advising him of the terrible danger he was in. Carrying Bill out was much easier than Ruben had imagined, 'I suppose when you are running for your life everything seems easier.'

The angels told him to dodge into a sturdy looking hotel lobby and guided him to an inner office, he had just closed the door in the pitch black room when the bomb detonated, shaking dust loose from around him. Ruben took out a flashlight and made sure the walls weren't ready to collapse. There were no cracks and the ceiling looked sound, so Ruben angled a chair in front of the door and sat down in it. Bill was unconscious on the desk in front of him. The man had been convulsing as Ruben carried him, and then became unduly hot, now he just looked like he was unconscious.

Ruben dozed off and didn't wake up until Bill shook him awake. The old man's hand reached for the gun on his hip and automatically pulled out his knife when he discovered his pistol was missing. 'I ditched my pistol in the car. Old habits die hard.' Bill was staring at him intently. There was a light sitting on the desk where Ruben had put Bill when they came in. 'The man does not look happy.'

'You left him.' Bill stated.

Ruben nodded, there was no use denying it. Bill didn't seem angry; instead he seemed unreadable, cold, as if made of stone. With a barked sob Bill turned and smashed both hands down on the heavy desk behind him. The light went flying and pieces of the desk went bounced throughout the office, embedding themselves in the walls. The light hit the floor and rocked back and forth until it lay pointing in Ruben's direction.

Bill walked to the metal filing cabinet and took more of his grief out on it, battering it into a small lump of metal with his bare hands. He left bloody streaks on the cabinet as it was crushed and his flesh parted from hitting the jagged tears his pounding created. When the cabinet was but a small, round lump he knocked a set of shelving off of the wall, breaking them with such ease that Ruben couldn't help but laugh. This got Bill's attention and he whirled on the older man.

'Why did you leave him? It should have been me!'

Ruben shrugged, 'He told me to take you and go.'

'He was my best friend!'

'I gathered that. How are your hands?'

Bill held his fists up in front of him, the blood was still wet, but he wasn't bleeding anymore. With one hand he wiped the other off, revealing whole flesh that appeared never to have been damaged.

'They're fine.' Bill sighed and kicked through the debris to another office chair. 'What are we going to do, Ruben?'

'I have a car. We can take it and go.'

Bill leaned forward and put his head on his hands, 'I can't go back. Not without Max. How will I look his kids in the eye?'

'You love them like you loved Max, you raise them and someday you tell them what happened.'

'I don't even know what happened.' Bill muttered.

Ruben let him sit brooding for a few minutes, then stood and kicked the chair he had been sitting in away from the door.

'What are you doing?' Bill asked.

'Me? Nothing. We, however, are leaving.'

Ruben stepped outside and examined the building, it still looked sound, but the windows had all been blown out. Moving into the street he found the entire area was a rubble strewn mess. The facings of most of the buildings had been torn off, littering the streets with chunks of brick and slivers of glass. Without a word Ruben set off towards the house where he had left the car. Bill followed, looking, hoping, they would run into something to kill.

The streets were empty. It was still raining, but the downpour had ended. Ruben and Bill trudged through