That Last Onset

  That Last Onset

  Jason and Azazel: Apocalypse

  Book Six

  by V. J. Chambers

  Jason wants to punish himself for all the horrible things he’s done, and so he’s been lying low and wallowing in his guilt. When he discovers that Kieran and Eve are threatening his son, Chance, he finds Azazel so that the two of them can stop Kieran and Eve.

  Kieran and Eve, now in possession of Jason and Azazel’s powers, have the world in a chokehold. They see everything, know everything, and control everything. The only way to stop them is for Jason and Azazel to take back their powers.

  But in order to do so, they must go through a series of tests, each pushing them deeper into their own darkness. If they get their power back, they run the risk of becoming the very evil they want to fight. But if they don’t get the power, Kieran and Eve win and Chance is lost.

  THAT LAST ONSET

  © copyright 2011 by V. J. Chambers

  http://vjchambers.com

  Punk Rawk Books

  Smashwords Edition

  Please do not copy or post this book in its entirety or in parts anywhere. You may, however, share the entire book with a friend by forwarding the entire file to them. (And I won’t get mad.)

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I am indebted to my wonderful beta reader for helping me whip this book into shape. Thank you so much Melinda Desy.

  THAT LAST ONSET

  Jason and Azazel, Apocalypse: Book Six

  by V. J. Chambers

  Part One

  I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –

  The Stillness in the Room

  Was like the Stillness in the Air –

  Between the Heaves of Storm –

  -Emily Dickinson

  CHAPTER ONE

  The mornings were the worst. That was when I awoke from the dreams that came to swallow me up like sharks swimming in deep water. There were so many faces in the dreams. Girls who looked at me with terror in their eyes and begged for me to let them live. Men who shrieked like children as I tore off their fingers. Groups of people smiling at me in beatific joy as I ordered them to run headlong into slaughter. So, so many faces. And they were all dead.

  I was the one who’d killed them.

  Sometimes when I woke up in the mornings, gray light hammering into my skull through the holes in my threadbare curtains, I thought I wouldn’t be able to handle it anymore.

  But I couldn’t end it. That wouldn’t be fair to all of those who’d died. It would give me peace. It would give me blissful nothingness. And I owed it to them to suffer. I could offer none of those faces anything to make up for what I’d done. All I could do was tell them I was sorry. And that I didn’t forgive myself. I never would. I’d punish myself for as long as it took.

  Maybe the evenings were the worst. After the work of the day was done, and I’d put in my time on the farm hoeing and planting and harvesting. When the twilight came in and blanketed me before I was tired enough to sleep. When there was nothing to occupy myself with but thinking. When it seemed there wouldn’t be any way to handle the anguish if I didn’t channel it somehow.

  The knives looked so tempting then.

  But I’d stopped cutting myself.

  It was juvenile. I wasn’t some teenager, wearing black clothes, hoping for the attention of my mommy or a guidance counselor. And the cutting made me weak. Too much blood loss meant I wasn’t productive. If I were weak, people got suspicious. And if people got suspicious...

  It was just better to lie low.

  But in the evenings, I’d stare at the knives, remembering how deliciously relieved I felt when I let them slice into my skin. As if all the pain of my memories was channeled into physical pain. As if, for a little while, the blood I was letting out of my body washed it all away. But I couldn’t do it anymore. It had been years since I had.

  I’d had to stop because someone had noticed. A girl, one of the ones who worked in the fields with me, had seen my scabs when the sleeve of my shirt slid up as I was weeding in the corn fields. I’d managed to pass it off as an accidental injury, but I’d known then that I couldn’t take the risk of anyone finding out.

  No one cut themselves anymore, not even angsty goth high school kids. There weren’t any angsty teenagers anymore. Not since Kieran and Eve had taken over. Now the world was a paradise. Everyone was happy. They worked happily. They ate happily. They sang and danced. Nothing bad happened anymore. No one was sad. I was glad for that. If I’d kept my powers, I would have killed them all. I knew that. But I couldn’t let myself succumb to that happiness. That was why, every morning, I chewed some leaves from a plant that blocked their influence, and kept me cocooned in my little bubble of misery and penance.

  No. The mornings were the hardest.

  Because every morning, I knew that if I didn’t chew the leaves, I could escape into their world—oblivion and joy. And every morning, I had to make sure I made the same choice. Chew the leaves.

  Because Jason Wodden didn’t deserve happiness, and I had to make sure I never felt it ever again.

  * * *

  “The usual?” asked Abigail, the waitress at the diner where I had breakfast every morning. I was sitting at the bar. Abigail had her order pad at the ready, but I wasn’t sure why. We both knew I ordered the same thing every day.

  I nodded, giving her a wide smile. I had to pretend to be as happy as everyone else or people would realize something was up. “Absolutely.”

  Abigail bobbed her head and scurried off to put in my order: two eggs sunny-side up, bacon, and toast. I ate it every morning before heading to work on the farm, washing it down with a cup of black coffee. While I waited for my food, I watched the television, which was on in a corner with the closed captioning on. Instead of the noise of the TV, the diner piped in country music. I used to hate country music, but I found that I had very little taste for music, one way or another, those days. Living with the weight of hundreds of dead people on my soul made things like that not seem very important.

  The news reporter on TV was talking about how Kieran and Eve were still searching for a miracle cure for their impotency. They wanted to have babies, and everyone on earth wanted them to have babies, but apparently, it wasn’t working very well. The news never went into specifics, but privately, I hoped that it was Kieran’s fault. I never liked the guy much, even before he participated in stealing my powers and taking over the world. I was glad not to have my powers, and I wasn’t the least bit bitter about how things had turned out, but let’s just say it would make me grin a little to find out my dick was bigger than his. I smirked, imagining for a brief moment hunting down Azazel just to ask her.

  “Something funny?” Abigail set a coffee cup in front of me.

  Startled, I looked up at her. “No, nothing.”

  She poured coffee into my cup. “Too bad. You’re always so solemn, Jason. It would be nice to see you laughing about something.”

  “I’m not solemn,” I said, feeling panicky. I thought I hid it well. If Abigail thought I seemed sad, did others think so too? Of course, Abigail was pretty much the only person I spoke to on a regular basis, and our conversations generally didn’t consist of much more than my ordering and her asking me if I wanted refills. She was probably the only person who knew my name, the only person whose name I knew.

  “Oh, sure you are,” she said, setting down the coffee cup and leaning forward over the bar. “You’re the most intriguing person who comes into this diner. Every day, I watch you.” She grinned at me conspiratorially. “I wonder about you. Who is the man who’s always all alone, who never says anything?” She leaned back. “I don’t suppose you’d tell me, would you?”

  The panic rose in my chest. I didn’t want to sta
nd out. I’d spent my whole life standing out, being something special. Jason Wodden, the messiah. Jason Wodden, the crazed murderer. Jason Wodden, the abomination. Anonymity, that’s what I wanted. I didn’t want to raise curiosity in anyone, even waitresses at diners. “I’m no one,” I said, reaching for my coffee, avoiding her gaze.

  “Well, I guess no one’s anything important really. No one except Kieran and Eve,” said Abigail. “I have this faint memory sometimes that it used to bother me, before they took over the world, that I wasn’t anything important. And then they came. And now everything is perfect and wonderful. We’re all so blessed.”

  “Yes,” I said. I tried to get the right amount of adoration into my voice. “Kieran and Eve have saved us all.”

  “They’re really so, so great,” she said, and I could hear in her voice that I’d completely missed the mark. She was swelling with joy. I couldn’t quite manage that much joy. It wasn’t in me. Perhaps I should stop coming to the diner. Perhaps I was tempting fate by being in public. Certainly, I could cook my own breakfast at home, couldn’t I? Why did I even bother coming here? But Abigail was still talking. I focused on her words instead of my thoughts. “Sometimes, when I think about how absolutely perfect they are, it makes me feel as though I’m going to explode from happiness, you know?”

  “I know,” I said. But now I really wanted this conversation to be over. People these days could talk for hours about Kieran and Eve and how fabulous they were. People did talk about them for hours, in fact. All the time. It was boring, if you asked me, but then, happy people were boring. I’d never realized before how much of what made life interesting was really caught up in the bad stuff—the annoyances, the frustrations, the longings. Without all that, things were the same happy things all the time. But I had to keep up appearances, so I was stuck in this boring conversation. Maybe if I talked more, Abigail would become less interested in me. “I really hope they can figure out how to have a baby.”

  “Oh!” Abigail was in rapture at the thought. “I do too. Can you imagine how amazingly beautiful a baby they’d make?”

  “So amazingly beautiful.” Crap. Did I sound sarcastic? This was why I didn’t talk to people. I couldn’t pull it off. Besides, it was so much easier to let myself get sucked into my memories and my misery. They were real to me, not the bliss and joy that everyone else got from Kieran and Eve.

  Abigail sighed, looking off into the distance and undoubtedly imagining a perfect baby. She turned back to me. “I better check on your food.”

  I turned back to the television. The news reporter was still talking, although I didn’t know why we even bothered with the news anymore. Nothing bad happened anymore. No one stole things or killed people or started wars. It was perfect peace on earth. Bliss. Paradise. And I alone was the dark cloud inside the brightness. I read the closed captioning. “Kieran and Eve have announced their latest Festival and Games location and date,” it said.

  I barely paid attention to this, but early this year, Kieran and Eve had started staging festivals at various locations around the world. They descended on a town for a day, and the occupants got to spend time drinking and watching the locals compete in various games and competitions. Everyone got excited about them, but everyone got excited about everything, from eating toast to going to work. It wasn’t as if this were ancient Rome, and Kieran and Eve had to placate the lower classes by giving them festivals. I didn’t know why they did it. Maybe they were bored too.

  “The date is today,” read the closed captioning. “And the location is Olivia, Minnesota.”

  A collective gasp rippled through the diner. We were living in Olivia, Minnesota.

  Immediately, one of the waitresses switched off the country music and turned up the sound on the television. Everyone got up and gathered round to listen. Because it would look suspicious if I didn’t, I followed them. Everyone was excited because Kieran and Eve were coming here. Work was canceled for the day. Everyone was required to go out and have fun. Now. They were glad. I wanted the physical labor of working in the corn fields to help me fight off the memories of the dead faces that floated in my mind. That wasn’t going to happen.

  Abigail was next to me. “Isn’t it so exciting?” She was already taking off her apron and name badge. I guessed that meant the diner was closed. Crap. I was hungry.

  Abigail took my hand. “Spend the day with me today, Jason. It will be so much fun.”

  Fun? I wasn’t good at that these days. But how could I get out of spending the day with her without arousing her suspicions? I didn’t think I could. I nodded. “Sounds like a blast.”

  * * *

  I shouldn’t have worried about food. When Kieran and Eve’s entourage arrived—over twenty helicopters that descended on the main square in town—they brought more food than the town had seen in months. Not that it bothered anyone. When people are perfectly happy, they tend to eat only as much as they need. They don’t overeat, and they don’t worry about where their next meal is going to come from. Kieran and Eve were set up on a pair of thrones in the center of the town. They urged everyone in town to eat, so eat they did. They gorged themselves on sausages and breads, on cheeses and oranges. Wine and beer flowed free, even though no one got drunk much these days. There wasn’t much point in drowning your sorrows when you were never sad. There wasn’t much point in celebrating when everything on earth left you ultimately ecstatic. There weren’t ups and downs, so there was no celebration. Kieran and Eve told the people to drink, and so they drank.

  Abigail and I stuffed ourselves until we were full, and then we wandered through the streets together, watching children playing together, men and women laughing together. Everyone was happy. It was like any other day.

  What was the point of these festivals?

  I tried to stay out of the sight of either Kieran or Eve. They might recognize me, and I didn’t want to be recognized. Truthfully, in the five years since they’d taken over, they’d never tried to find me or bother me, but something inside me made me distrustful of them. They hadn’t bothered me yet, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t. I laid low. I listened to Abigail as she told me her life story.

  She’d lost both her parents as a small child and had been shuffled through the foster system, where she’d been abused by one of her foster mothers. This had continued through the period when Sutherland ruled the western part of the U.S., right after the solar flare. She’d come of age right after he’d been killed (by me and Azazel), and then spent a few years in hiding while the Witch of the OF (Azazel) pulled people into skirmishes and fights against Jason.

  Abigail had a good laugh at that one. “You have the same name, don’t you?”

  I was always worried that someone was going to notice me from those YouTube videos that had circulated around that time, but they seemed to be more concentrated on the east coast, where I’d been more active. I’d come west hoping to hide from my past. Thus far, it had worked.

  Abigail’s story was pitiful. Devoid of any hope. She’d been raped by a group of marauders, become pregnant, and then lost the baby in a miscarriage. It was the kind of story that should have crippled a person. And, I noted, there were parts of it that were directly or indirectly my own fault. I’d helped destroy the entire country when Azazel and I had been fighting. The horrible things I’d done had wide-reaching effects. Abigail shouldn’t have been well-adjusted or happy. But because of Kieran and Eve, she was fine. I’d destroyed the world. They’d remade it.

  I watched them as they sat on their thrones. They looked a little older. I guessed we all did. It had been five years after all. They wore robes in bright colors. They had crowns on their heads. That was a relatively new addition to their appearances. The crowns. They’d been wearing them for a year, perhaps. I wasn’t sure why. Maybe they really liked their power. Above us on their dais, they looked larger than life, more than human. Impartial gods to stare down at the riff raff, feeding them for their own amusement.

  They were bore
d, weren’t they? I’d controlled a community before, kept them all in the kind of bliss that Kieran and Eve kept the people of the world now. If I hadn’t had something to occupy myself with—my obsession with Azazel—how long would it have taken before I’d gone out of my mind with boredom? After all, people were so simpering and stupid when you were controlling their brains like that. They were toys you played with. I looked at Kieran and Eve up there. I got it.

  It was good that it wasn’t me up there, and that it was Kieran and Eve, who were good people. When I got bored, I killed. At least they only threw parties. They were so much better suited for the power than I’d ever been.

  “What about you?” Abigail asked. “What’s your story?”

  On the spot, I groped for a lie. I couldn’t think of anything, so I opted for a stripped-down version of the truth. “There wasn’t much to my life until I met a girl. We fell in love, and then we grew to hate each other. And then we got back together again. And then I realized we weren’t exactly good for each other. Well, I wasn’t good for her, anyway. Then Kieran and Eve took over the world, and I’m here.”

  “You’d be good for each other now, wouldn’t you?” Abigail asked. “Now that Kieran and Eve are here, relationships work out really well, don’t they?”

  I shrugged. “I wouldn’t know how to find her. I’m fine here.”

  “Of course you are,” said Abigail. She smiled at me. “Was she pretty? This girl?”

  I nodded. “Beautiful. And strong. So strong. She could handle anything that anyone threw at her. She was amazing.”

  Abigail gave me a funny look. She didn’t say anything.

  I waited.

  She made a little laughing noise. “I’m sorry. It’s only that when you talk about that girl, you sound more excited about her than you do when you talk about Kieran and Eve. And I haven’t heard anyone do that since...” She furrowed her brow.