The Last Black Flag

Every man spent two years on the wall. Most never made it home. Those that returned were hailed as heroes, or locked behind steel bars. The Wall was a killer, a death sentence. Most men went up to the wall at the age of seventy, having lost any real reason to live. I was twenty five when my term began, just out of childhood, in the flower of life. Damn the Quota.
Every twelve years, a census was taken on the wall. If the number of living and able was too few, the young were sent to defend. Welcome to New Boston.
The first week they say is the best. The newbee’s always are taken care of. After that, hell starts. The polythene armor chaffs your skin, and seals need to be constantly watched to avoid exposure to radiation. The air vents are tight. Breathing is a chore. My gun freezes to my hand, my fingers crack in the frigid winter. The bullets we use, we have to make ourselves. The sergeants don’t care what their made of as long as they can kill. All they supply is the powder.
So what do we do on the wall? We watch. We fight. We die. Outside the wall is were the dead are. New Boston is the last haven for normal human life. We are the living, they are the Dead. The Bombs of the Last World War wiped out everything South of the equator, and north of the 80th. In the years before the war, the United States had developed a virus that would bond with uranium atoms and cause rapid mutations in any life form known. The Dead are the survivors, the ones who had stayed on the surface and lived. The War continues, and the wall is mankind’s only defense against them.
I remember the first time I saw the dead. It was in the summer, prewar seasons. There are no seasons now. And they, they came marching across the gray wastes. An endless army, marching straight towards us. The old man next to me turned around and ran back to his bunk. I hate old men like that, leaving kids to do their dirty work. Fear gripped my soul as the hoards approached. There was something about the way they moved, shuffling, kind of aimlessly marching forward. Their bright red skin and hairless heads told of the tolls of radiation. Cold sweat ran all the way down my spine as they came closer. Thump Thump Thump. Somehow perfectly in time, precise steps with guns aimed high.
I had to know if they could bleed. One walked less then a foot from the wall and stood in front of my turret. Hell, his eyes were nearly all white, except for the pupils, dilated and tiny. He smiled, his teeth were discolored and elongated. And sharp. My God, he looked like a movie vampire from the early Twenty-first century. he waved his hand in front of the gun. Then all I could see was red. The sound of rapid fire and shells hitting the floor snapped the surreal feeling. I wiped him off of my visor, and he was still looking at me. His head just sat there, hanging in space for the longest time before it fell, all that remained of his torso. He was still smiling when he fell, red blood splattering across my body armor. Red blood! Just like me. The Dead were alive.
The medics carried me to the decontaminating chamber and checked me over. I don’t remember much of the examination. I remember the dreams though. bad dreams. Nightmares.
I could see myself in the mess hall. I was alone. Than one of the Dead walked in. he was so red, it looked like he was glowing. He put his weird, lumpy, deformed hand on my shoulder. The sensation of heat spread across my back and chest from it. “Join us, Brother.”
I couldn’t tell whether the dream was woke me up or the alarm did. I hate dreams that scare you like that. You always wake up, soaked from head to toe, and your bunk mates always ask dumb questions when you come out of the shower. Jerks.
The second dream was worse though. It came two days later. Me and my friend, Joe, had been playing cards in the Rec when I went out. Joe said I was ‘out like a freakin’ light.’ I was in the Rec still, in the dream. I was alone, and since I didn’t know what happened, I started calling for Joe. I walked over to the pool table and bent over to see if he was hiding or something. I get back up, and the Dead are standing there. Three of them, all standing there, hairless and glowing, with those crazy white eyes. One pointed to the table and I followed his blistered finger. He was pointing to a map of the States after the war. He tapped an island, near the old port city of New York. Manhattan Island.
“Come home, Brother.” The Dead on my left was talking. “All the answers to the questions you will have are here.”
I tried to say something, but it was too late. They were gone, and Joe was shaking me like crazy. He had no idea what I had seen, but it didn’t matter. I slammed his head against the wall and jumped away. I ran out of the Rec before Joe came to.
We talked later, me wrapped up in a strait jacket and him with white bandages stuffed up his broken nose. He cussed me out, and I did the same. The mediator just sat there and listened to us and watched the proceedings. Joe was huffing and puffing so bad, the gauze packs flew out. He was crazy. When they finally let me go, all I got was stares and hard looks from the old men who had run away from the Dead, and who were friends with Joe. Joe could switch alliances faster than Italy in the First World War. I was alone again.
I got kicked off the wall a month later. This time for fighting with the old man I was on guard duty with. He didn’t like the fact that I didn’t want to talk, so he started ripping up my body armor. I don’t remember much else, except that when I was done, he was lying on the ground outside the Wall. His head was crooked and his arms bent weird. They court-martialed me and wiped out my record. New Boston officials are really efficient.
Even my friends outside the wall wouldn’t talk to me when I got out. They always said that the wall changes people. It was more true than they could ever imagine.
Me seeing the Dead, my time on the Wall had turned me around. I hates walking and working alongside the living. Everything was set to a schedule to avoid chaos and confusion. I couldn’t deal with the rigid structure I had lived with for a quarter of a century. I hated it. The Wall wasn’t the killer, it was the tedious life that led up to it. Apparently, I was the only one who thought so. I withdrew into my apartment and no one came to see me.
I had more dreams. The Dead were my only condolence, my escape from the white, sterile walls of my room. The third came a month after my discharge. In the dream, there were four of them. I didn’t find them repulsive or scary now, though. They came into my room and sat down on the floor. I joined them, not knowing what else to do. One reached his hand towards me and touched my face. They said stuff, but I don’t remember much. I do remember him touching me though.
The day before, I had cut my cheek shaving. It had hurt and bled for an hour or so. When I woke up from the dream, I checked the cut. There was no cut, no blood. The dead could heal the living.
Another dream came a few days later. Instead of being in some place familiar, I was standing on a rock pinnacle, the armies of the Dead stretching out before me, on to the horizon on both sides. The four Dead who had visited me in the last dream stood along side me. One was holding a black flag. I looked behind me, and saw New Boston, and the Wall. questions came, welling up inside me Why do the Dead speak to me? Am I to leave all that I have ever known to follow dreams on my own will? What was the black flag? What does it all mean?
It took a long time for the things to start to come together. Before I knew it, my refrigerator was empty, and I had no money. I was evicted from my apartment with no where to go. The questions haunted me, chasing me from one street corner to the other. I didn’t have to worry about the rain, because New Boston was built under a massive dome, supported by the Wall. The dome kept out the weather. It wasn’t that bad, being homeless. You become so set on surviving that nothing else matters. At night, you don’t dream because your mind is so tired from thinking all day.
It got real cold at night. The buildings sucked the warmth right out of the air, and right out of anything that moved near them. They were big, concrete freezers, with meat lying inside, on platters of cloth, in cubicles within its walls. When normal people go to sleep, the climate control units shut down and nuclear winter permeates the radiation sealed metropolis. Food could be a problem too. Without a place to live, you don’t get ration cards. And there aren’t shelters in New Boston where the homeless can go. Why would someone build a place to help just one person? I’m the only homeless man in all of New Boston, an outcast. People cross to the other side of the street when they see me.
Some lady started yelling at me for scaring the public with my actions. All I was doing was washing my face and hands in the fountain. It was better then what I’ve seen some parents let their kids do in public. I had never seen this woman before and she just started yelling at me. She called me every name in the book, and some I could swear she made up herself. She just kept screaming, and no one stopped or cared. I wasn’t anything to them. The second I opened my mouth though, some guy is hitting me in the face for talking rudely to her. Never mind what she had said to me, I was the problem because I was different. he found out the hard way how different I was, the hard way.
The image of the Black Flag flashed through my mind and I started swinging. My time on the Wall had sharpened me beyond anything this ape could have imagined. I was a knife that drove enemies to the breaking point and into oblivion. His face was purple by the time I was finished. I had twisted his arms behind his back and crushed his wrists and fingers. I had tied them into knots and flipped him over and pounded his chest until I heard ribs breaking.
The cops pulled me off and hauled him off to the morgue. I never understand why they called it that. way back when life and death meant something, morgues were places for the dead to wait and be prepared for burial. Now, when someone died, they were thrown in the massive furnace that heated our fair city.
The cops took me to their office and tied me down to the bed while some guy I couldn’t see questioned me. The light above me was too bright. Another guy shaved my beard and all of my facial hair. Then he started on my head, and I sensed that there was something different being done with modern criminals. All the time, the man kept up his questioning and I answered as best I could. They took a skin sample from my back, and left. I was in total silence with that bright light for what seemed like an eternity. What was going on? Then questions started again. He asked about my encounter with the Dead on the Wall. He checked over my medical record and my military service record. he was just about for read about my discharge when someone came in. My eyes could see a little bit now, and I could see the new person standing there, by the door.
It was a guard, heavily armored against radiation. Was there a leak somewhere? No, because the alarms would have sounded. The guard looked me over, then started talking. “I suppose you wonder why you are here.” He was an idiot. I knew why I was there. I had killed a man. “You are here because your actions have proven to us that you are a danger to society. You will be part of an experiment that will involve you living outside of New Boston for a time. You have no say in this matter, for as a prisoner, you have no rights. You will be placed on the island of Manhattan and must attempt to colonize it on your own. You will be required as long as you remain alive, to report back on your progress.” He turned on his heel and left the room.
Someone came in and undid my bindings. They forced me down the hall to an air lock. On the other side waited a ship that would take me to my future. I was America’s last immigrant, leaving my home for a new life full of opportunity. The Dead would become my brothers and I would help them defeat the monsters who exiled them. New Boston would be an enemy to me, and to all who lived outside the Wall.
The wind cut straight to the bone when i got out of the ship. I didn’t have anything on but the clothes I had been living in, and the bag they gave me didn’t include a jacket. It only had tools, a knife, and my old gun. They said powder would come once I was established on the land. I kicked some of the rocks that lay scattered around the ruined buildings. One hit a monolithic girder and rang like a bell. Sonic waves shattered the scene, and things began to move.
Out of the gray buildings that lined the street came the Dead. They crowded around and one grabbed my hand. The same warm feeling from the first dream came again. He smiled, those teeth gleaming. I wasn’t scared anymore. I was among the Dead.
It took a week before the radiation sickness set in. My skin felt like it was falling off. The virus was working fast. I wanted to actually die, but something kept me going. One of the Dead, a guy named Dirk stayed with me through it. It helped to have someone there. I coughed blood, my hair fell out. By Thursday of the next week, my hands had swollen, grown to twice the size, and I was a giant among the Living.
The radiation did things with my mind and nerves too. It sped up my mind and heightened my sight. I could sense things before they happen, and could think things through before anything happened. But I started seeing things too. Dreams. They were weird, like a movie or something.
There was a castle, and all around it were guys wearing shirts made of rings, and buckets with holes. They were carrying axes, and swords and were marching towards the castle. In the castle, guys with funny hats and curved swords stood waiting. The metal heads outside the castle watched the castle raise a white flag. I know that meant that they surrendered, but I didn’t understand what the metal heads did. They raised a black banner and waved it around. I understood it later though.
It turned to the inside of the castle, like a cut from one scene to another without showing what had gone on. It was obvious what the result was. The castle gate was gone, and there wasn’t a single shed or barn inside still standing. Metal heads were burning the bodies of the funny hats guys, and blood was everywhere. The black flag was on the battlements.
The black flag meant no quarter or mercy. What a concept for a siege.
When I woke up, Dirk was gone, and someone had replaced him. She was a female- No, a woman. I was one of them, so there was no need to use technical terms like they were an experiment. The radiation hadn’t hit her as hard as it could have, but she still wasn’t like the Living. Somehow, Dead women have more to them, on the inside. The outside appearance doesn’t matter to the Dead anymore.
She gave me a mirror, though, so i could see what I looked like. I was still thinking with my old mind, and I almost threw up. I had changed so much.
Dirk came back in, and handed me my gun. I could see fire in his eyes, and danger in his smile. he took me by the hand and led me out. Sickness left me as i walked out the door. The gun felt good in my hand, the cool weight, the power that it held. Dirk’s smile widened as we walked between the rows of houses. Others came out from hiding. Each one had a gun in his hand and a long knife in his belt. They followed us.
he brought me to a skeletal building, all steel framework and crumbly foundation. The Dead never said much, they just kind of know. I knew what they wanted. I started climbing. hand over hand, slowly, I made my way up the side of the monstrosity. Wind whipped around me, and my teeth started chattering. Then the top came into view.
The roof was a massive pillar of rock, and at the top, there they were. The four Dead from the dreams were standing there at the pinnacle. They smiled as i came up, and each one embraced me.
“Welcome home, Brother.” The man from the first dream gripped my shoulder, his three-fingered grip strong and sure. “This is your place, and these...” He swung his hand to indicate the land all around us. On rooftops, in the streets, on bridges, on the mainland, the Dead were everywhere. “...are your people. Do you accept them?”
There was total silence as they waited for my answer. tears filled my eyes as I thought about what saying ‘yes’ meant. These people had accepted me for who I was, not on terms of blood or out of obligation. I couldn’t refuse them.
A chopper from New Boston came flying down from the North. It probably had the powder for me in its hold. I needed that powder... No, no, my people needed that powder. I spun around and put three bullets in the cabin. It spiraled downward and crunched into the street below. I watched the crates fall and break open and the Dead who waited nearby, fell on it like starving men. The shells were distributed, and I watched my army arm itself. These were my people.
It would take a few days for New Boston to realize the threat that was coming. The Dead had risen and were marching against the living. We were the dominant race. According to the thinking that ran in New Boston, based on some 18-hundreds scientist by the name of Darwin, their lives were forfeit. Their time had come to be obliterated.
We tore the chopper to pieces and threw the bodies to the rats that filled our sewers, here in New York. Buildings were torn down and girders were melted down to make weapons. The old treasury building was emptied, the gold made into shells, filled with crumbled concrete. The stuff wreaks havoc with human lungs when its released. Our branch in in the Fall River, was breaking down the old, rusting battleship Massachusetts and preparing the guns for war. Dirk sent out small squads to the west to bring back cannons that sat outside court houses and town halls. We needed to risk their instability and unreliability in order to break through the Wall.
It was like walking through an iron forest when Dirk and I surveyed the troops a few months later. The Dead had made improvised body armor, and everyone carried a long, jagged pike along with their guns. Where ever the skin could be seen through the armor, it glowed red with the building tension. Dirk’s eyes gleamed and his smile widened as we drew near the end of the ranks. We past them, and Dirk gestured for me to follow him. he took me to the base of a hill.
Beneath our feet, the ground began quaking. I tried to move to see, but Dirk held me back. Over the crest of the hill, roared three tanks. I was about to say something, but then I heard the droning. Something I had never dreamed of passed over the hill. Somewhere, somehow, one of the squads had found a bomber and had somehow gotten it to work. We had airpower! The advantage was ours at last.
We marched on New Boston that night, feeling powerful, dominant and crushing wrath. Dawn showed us the City, gleaming under its lead shields, protected from the radiation we had adapted to. We were the master race, and color of skin didn’t matter. We were all the Dead, rising against the Living. The cold, sterile bubble was surrounded by a sea of black and red and rusted metal. And a single waving banner, a massive salute to the final conflict.
We raised the last Black Flag and our siege began.
The cannonade echoed off the Wall, followed by the sound of sheering metal. Cannonballs ripped through the soft lead shield and pierced through to the inner wall. Then the guns from the Massachusetts opened fire. They acted like giant machine guns, pounding the city, relentlessly pouring fire into its pockmarked surface. The wall fell away in chunks now, opening a way into the city. A breach in their defenses.
I knew from experience that the Living would all run and take protection under the High Dome, a temple of sorts to themselves. They hid there, as a last defense against any threats. It could be sealed off on its own in case of a radiation leak. They would hide there, at the very center of New Boston, all clumped together like rats in a trap. And the wolves would come and ravage them in their inner sanctum. We would wipe their pitiful race away, and take our place as master, and put an end to this prejudiced society and live on in a utopian world, one race, one people, one world. We would...
We would wait. Dirk and the Four came to me in the night before we attacked. “Everything is ready for tomorrow, Brother.” Dirk was smiling. “Dawn will bring an end to their race. Are there any regrets about taking this course in history?” No one said a word to that.
But something stirred within me. As the sun prepared to break the power of night, I left the camp. Many of the Dead scurried through the frigid air, preparing to attack. I wanted to see the inside of New Boston one last time. I left orders with Dirk to continue with the attack as planned, even if he didn’t hear back from me.
Getting in was easy, just climbing through an abandoned gun post. Everything was quiet as I walked through the halls. Too quiet for my liking, too quiet for a human dwelling. I walked on through the halls, the lights turning on slowly as I walked by. It was almost unearthly. I walked towards the massive escalator system that carried people to the Dome. It had stopped recently, permanently, since the dust that collected was thin, dimly covering the rubber mats. Outside, I could hear the roar of the cannons.
The escalator stairs trembled beneath my feet. Upwards, higher and higher i went, closer and closer to the Dome and a feeling of imminent doom. Something was up there, something i had to see. Inside the Dome, everyone was assembled as I had planned. But everything was still too quiet. The people weren’t moving, weren’t breathing, weren’t Living. Time seemed to stand still. What had killed them? What had happened? The percussion from the guns started rippling through the Dome. The Dead had started their final assault on New Boston. I could hear it cracking, and I know I should have left, but I had to know what had happened, or at least get a general idea.
Their mighty temple was in ruins, everything thrown and destroyed in some mad riot. Men in white robes were standing around a fake tree, an abstract sculpture to the beauty of nature lost after the War. They weren’t moving, their fists frozen above their heads in death. I looked up into the tree and saw what they had been pointing at. Three black men had been hanged from its lifeless branches. On the wall directly behind the tree was a painted image of a burning cross.
I looked around the room. All around me, from every jutting point where they could throw a rope over, black men were hanging. But there was something else. Everyone was dead, all facing out from a single point towards the center of the room, as if they had been trying to escape from something.
There was a tight huddle of black men and women in the center. They were holding tanks of gas with tubs running into their mouths. They were in a circle around a single figure, dressed in a white robe with a huge conical hood. His arms were upraised, as if demanding quiet from the silent masses. The tanks had contained carbon monoxide and a nerve agent. I pushed my way through the bodies and climbed up onto the platform with the leader, or priest or whatever he called himself in life. the cannonballs were starting to hit the dome now, making it shake.
he had a piece of paper in front of him. It told of the master race, and how in order to purify the world, all the undesirables had to be gotten rid of. Only when they had been suppressed, the master race rise to its full grandeur. My eyes widened. That was the same thing I had believed, that in order to let the Dead rise, the Living had to be destroyed. I removed the man’s hood. It was Joe, his face a twisted mask of... of hate. Like my own face, twisted by the virus.
I heard the drone of the bomber as it came closer. I punched Joe across his stiff face and watched as he toppled over and broke on the floor. What he had done was evil,, the actions he had incited were evil. The cause of the Dead was righteous and just. wasn’t it? I left the mausoleum as fast as i could. Behind me, I heard the bomber crash through the ceiling of the Dome, its flaming cargo filling the vast room with purifying fire. I felt the heat on my back as I ran, feeling the vicious wind pick me up and propel me forward, out into the waiting arms of my people.
Three days later, New Boston was a skeleton of its former glory. We had salvaged everything we could from the burned ruins, taking metal and books and things and sorting them into piles for different purposes. Books to fill libraries to educate and entertain the next generation, metal for transportation... But something was different, something empty about it. All this done by hate, we put an end to their racist ideals by becoming hateful ourselves and hating them. And destroying them. We were righteous, they were condemned. Now who was there to condemn? We have become the judge and the judged, the haters and the hated. Such is the lesson of the Last Black flag, that hate of others only leads to hate of oneself when they don’t exist to hate anymore.
I’m so glad I still have my gun.