ISSUE 009

In a smoking basement full of ashes, a sizzling metal hatch flops open like the Martian craft in Wells' "War of the Worlds". Wearing his trademark Stetson hat, Candy emerges with a satellite phone and surveys his surroundings: tens of thousands of square acres of smoking black nothing. He spots a small manufacturer's plate riveted to the inside of his bunker hatch and phones their customer service line (a call center in Mumbai) to tell them how pleased he is with their Titan's Gate Deluxe Model.

Back at Adam's pickup truck stalled nose-first in the ditch, the baby cries in Linda's cold arms. She's dead, and Adam is barely hanging on. A clean pair of hands gather the dirty, bloody newborn. It's a naked Modoc woman. She begins to nurse the baby, cleaning it as she walks away, singing softly.

The Modoc chief appears at Adam's window and undresses as Adam fades in and out of consciousness.

"You white men are on your own," the chief says. "The wheel of your world turned too fast for too long. Now it's broken. I went to high school with your dad and I know you're a good kid but I can't help you. We'll take care of your baby. Raise him right, I promise. He's going to live our way. In balance with nature, or not at all. Hey. There's a chance you might survive this. I mean, maybe you're still here because you're needed for the new world. For whatever's coming next. I have to go now. No offense. It's just we've been asking for a long time. Waiting for something like this to happen. Something to make things right again."

The road before Adam is carpeted with discarded clothing, keys, wallets and other modern clutter. The entire Modoc tribe abandons everything but necessities - rifles, blankets tied up with food stores inside. Dozens of men, women and children shuck their shoes and slip out of their clothes as they cross the highway and move south into the desert, naked bodies throwing long shadows in the morning sun.

They're going home.

Adam adjusts his rearview mirror with one ragged hand, sees the cinematic day-after-a-disaster survivor's sunrise, golden and blazing, ascending the smoky horizon behind him. Battered and bloody, Adam staggers from the pickup, hangs on the door for support as he looks around and shakily strips off his clothing.

He hobbles into the desert after the Modoc tribe wearing nothing but his boots, the rifle from his gunrack slung over one shoulder.

After a dozen steps he collapses in the desert among the sage. The first fly descends upon his cooling body, walks over the cornea of one open bloodshot eye.

Linda's baby is quiet and calm, protected in his new mother's arms (this child will grow up to be the figure whose life is the center of BASTION OF THE DAMNED - the third and final part of this trilogy).

Back at the Moonbeam, Howard appears to be the only creature stirring as he hammers away at the cannon-shattered jukebox inside the devastated and bloody tavern. He finally cracks the bill-acceptor shoe, beaming as his chubby fingers scrabble to draw out the crinkled ones and fives.

Marcel's odd, incomplete form drops from the rafters and he craters Howard's skull with a billiard ball before slitting his still-breathing body at the belly. Marcel slips a quivering mass of flesh - a few pounds of bloody tissue attached to Thibalut's weakly beating heart - into the incision. So long as a vampire's heart remains intact, he can regenerate to full form. A series of well-fed hosts like Howard supplemented by the blood supply of a few more slaughtered victims will speed Thibault's regeneration from two years to twelve months.

"Fais do-do - Go to sleep, Thibault," Marcel whispers in French, patting the lunchmeat lump churning inside Howard's surrogate belly as Thibault (always Marcel's favorite brother) takes root, squirming like a marsupial newborn.

Marcel uses an onboard winch to yard Howard's bulk into the sidecar of Ray's custom wheelchair, then trundles down the alley to the backyard of a meth cookhouse, where an unrelated shootout has left everyone dead except several unfed wild-eyed pit bulls. The crazed dogs snap and lunge, throwing themselves against the slinky chain-link fence to get a piece of Marcel.

Marcel unfolds a bloody bundle and removes the head, neck and armless chest of Lucien, skin gray and nearly bloodless, bristling with screws, coins and house keys from Ray's improvised beehive round.

"No ... " Lucien says, unable to beg above a whisper. His remaining eye is wide and comprehending, boiling with terror. "Marcel ... "

Marcel smiles and heaves his eldest brother over the fence. The dogs pull Lucien apart like a soggy pinata as Marcel dons goggles and gets on the road in Ray's amazing chair, Howard's comatose body bobbling alongside.

Back inside the Moonbeam, sprawled across one end of the billiard table under the path of last night's full moon, Ray's cold corpse opens its eyes. Jagged flecks of Russian-made RPG shrapnel from Afghanistan work their way from his spine to the surface of his skin and then drop to the bloodstained green felt.

He stands erect and stretches luxuriously like a cat after a long nap, sinuous and supple - no longer paralyzed.

Ray knocks back a shot at the bar and admires the handsome new glint of his eyes in the cracked mirror before stepping out into the hazy morning sun.