​Prelude

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The End had come. The sinners would be damned and the pious would be saved and all that crap echoed around the world as nutjobs holding sings and screaming verses of one holy book or another were replaced by religious representatives and government officials in prime time TV shows. The War to End All Wars was happening and we had better chose sides wisely.

Bullshit.

Behind those screams and foretelling of Apocalypse was fear. Religion had lost the battle with science and countries had finally succumbed to Empires made of stock and oil. What happened next was what always happens when the big boys have a fight: War. War unlike any the world had seen until then.

There were no soldiers. Only casualties. I’ll be damned if a single hand to hand combat was made, if one soldier ever looked at the face of his enemies. Too costly for the big boys, I guess.  So they dropped Einstein’s toy in every highly populated area and kept score. Whoever killed more would win.

With over 1,6 billion dead, I doubt counting tags was easy. And that number was on the first 3 days of the war’s week.

Who won? No one. No one came to tell us how they saved us and how, naturally, we owe them for that. Winners always do that.

No, the War was not the End. It just fucked up things even worse. The people got madder than usual. The nutjobs are back on the streets with their signs, only now they scream about the dead walking among us or their visions of angels coming to deliver us from this evil world. Some say that the war of the apocalypse was over and the savior would be among us soon.

I say if that was the Apocalypse, then the good guys are already gone and we’re the unlucky sods who got stuck in Hell.

Even Nature found its chance for payback. Radiation did freaky things to everything living on this planet and you can see stuff that seem to have jumped out of horror movies. Trees thought about the injustice of millennia of staying still, blind, deaf and mute and decided to change tactics. Animals got a meaner attitude and size, claws and fangs to back it up. I don’t know much about what happened to the rest of the world but in these parts, after fleeing to the countryside to escape the bombs, we crawled back to the cities to seek sanctuary.

Most of us came here. It ain’t pretty but it’s home and it seems to have escaped the bomb attacks. Beats me why. One of the guys that first came here said the city wasn’t here before the War and that it was a sign by God. Nutjob. With the water level having risen and whole parts of land being lost, we could be anywhere. He remembered some verses from a book and gave the city a new name.

He called it Armageddon.
                                      

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ACT I​

Monologue - Michael

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Blood.

That’s what it comes down to in Armageddon. Blood.

Be it the literal meaning of the substance of life or the metaphorical innuendo that implies war, power or money, it’s all the same in this place. Everyone’s after someone else’s blood.

In my case it’s all about the literal meaning.

Blood.

I had a name once. I was Michael Daughn, acrobat, stunt man and wild beast tamer in the Fantastic Feat Circus. I loved it but that was just a front, as was the entire Circus. Me and the others were burglars and damn good ones at that.

Moving around cities, we picked whole households clean, always careful to make the hits some days before or after the Circus was in town. Wouldn’t take a genius to connect the dots otherwise.

Well, someone did, anyway.

The raid came without the slightest warning. Right after the show was over and the crowd was gone, the sirens fell on us like red and blue vultures. One of us was stupid enough to pull out a gun.

All hell broke loose when he did. The cops were trigger happy, as was everyone during those days. A War was supposed to be coming and the mere mention of the word seemed to have had an almost unnatural effect on people, as if they knew of the nightmare that was to fall upon them.

Just my luck, it fell right as that bullet hit me.

Maybe I was lucky. The bomb must have been dropped in the middle of the city because the blast took some time to hit us. I thought, well, at least I’ll go with a bang.

Boy was I wrong…

Don’t ask what happened. I don’t have a clue. Maybe radiation did its shit or maybe the weirdos had it right and the End came so the dead came to live or whatever. Bottom line is I got up when I shouldn’t have had.

Everyone was dead. So was I, for all I know. The difference is… I still move. And I’m after the same thing as any other in this city.

Blood.

A euphoria fills my guts as I suck another poor sod in a dark alley. Who is he? Who cares? Chances are he’s no one, as is the vast majority of people in Armageddon. Still, I don’t kill him. I just sip enough to stay my hunger for now. He falls unconscious but he’ll be alright. He will forget the incident when he wakes up, not because there’s some mystical power at work, but because that’s the only defense you have against the pains and horrors this City throws at her children. Forget and move on. Those who don’t, end up either crazy or dead, the latter coming probably by their own hands.

It’s not pleasure I take from sucking this guy’s blood. It’s satisfaction, the satisfaction of fulfilling the only need I feel these days, the need to fill my dead veins with someone else’s life. And the taste? Heh, well, forget what you’ve read in every vampire story ever written. It doesn’t compare to the best red wine and then some, you cannot taste ambrosia and feel what the ancient gods did when they fed. The truth is, it sucks, and it doesn’t taste any better than biting a bronze doorknob.

But hey, it’s my food.

I wipe my mouth with my hand, throwing a gum in while I’m at it. It doesn’t help much with the rusted feeling in my stomach but at least I get rid of the aftertaste a bit. The gum package is empty and I throw it away. It lands on my meal’s forehead. I frown a bit. The poor bastard seems like garbage in my eyes, not because I think of him as such, but because he looks more at home on the pavement than walking around. Most people do in this place and I don’t think it’s far from the truth.
Armageddon. Earth’s biggest trash can, cleverly disguised as a city.

I shake my head to chase such thoughts away and I start walking deeper in the alley. I step lightly, with my hands in the pockets of my black leather jacket, the one I have since my biker days. I’m looking up, as I walk, scanning the buildings above me for potential prey, mostly out of habit. I get starred back by the yellow, empty eyes of lit windows. I always believed that you can know a great deal about people from simple things that define their lives. What they wear, what kind of coffee they drink, even how they dry their clothes. The strings that unite opposite windows serve as proof for my belief. The clothes that are hanging from them seem like lingering ghosts of the people that wear them, connected together only by a necessity of space shortage, a parade of battered banners, each secretly wishing they were the only one there.

I leave the ally and the pity I feel for the souls living there behind me. As much as my poetic nature drives me to wonder and observe the decadence that is Styxlyn, this isn’t my part of town and I have things to do, now that dinner has been served. I cross Styxlyn Avenue and find the place I have my motorcycle parked. She’s a beauty and I can’t help but smile as I lay my eyes on her black curves. Of all the beasts I’ve tamed in my life, she’s the wildest one, the fiercest, the most beautiful. She growls with pleasure, obedient under a gentle twist of my wrist and as I gear up, she screeches and unleashes her wrath on the street. The air washes even death from my face and what pleasure I didn’t take from feeding, I take from riding and the feeling of my black hair being pushed back. I test her limits as I speed between cars, ignoring all innuendos of red. Fear is a thing of the past for me, as all fear derives from the fear of the inevitability of death.
Been there, done that.

All the way east through Styxlyn, turning south to Seal and straight until I reach Barricades. Home. This is my place, my part of town, my corner in the world. She greets me with drunken laughs and agonized moans of junkies that look for their next hit of styx. A woman screams as she is pushed to the road, her purse with what little valuables she had already gone forever. Loud music pours outside from a club, mingled with a gunshot. The music doesn’t stop or if it did, I missed it cause I’m already gone. A few more blocks of pure chaos and I enter the narrow street where Salvation awaits.

No, nothing like that. Salvation is just a bar.

I park my bike in plain sight, just because I can. I have a name here. People know me and they know my ride. No one who has a reason to steal it would dare to and no one who’d dare has a reason to steal it. I’m happy with that arrangement.

Bull is already here, his brown van parked just in front of the entrance. I hate that bastard but he’s a good goon and goons are always useful in this town. Still, I scratch his hood as I pass by. Just because.

“Damned are those who pray upon the others, the Wolves among the sheep, the Lions among people. For they are condemned in the eyes of God and they shall be purged, even as they help purge others.”

The voice came from the shadows, just a few feet away. His words are those of yet another mad prophet and Armageddon has plenty of those around. Yet there is no passion in his voice, no fanatic fever burning in his eyes. I smile a bit. His kind is the most dangerous, giving you the impression you can have a decent conversation with them. I tell you what, man. If there is a god and you are his emissary, then your god is one mean bastard. And if he has condemned anyone at all more than the others, then that’s you. You who speaks to deafened ears, you who lives in denial, you who walks alone. For if there’s one damnation that is the most severe, that is solitude and your life, prophet, is the living testament to that.

I never speak my answer out loud back to him, knowing that I would be the one talking to deafened ears then. Still, I turn and look at him and that is more attention than any other “prophet” can claim he got from me. He looks at me right back, smiling and I think it’s a genuine sad smile of compassion. Poor kid, can’t be older than 20 and already his mind is lost.

“Sure thing, kiddo” I say to ease his early solitude a bit and then turn my back and enter the bar, the ring of the bell hanging on the door and the strong stench of sweat, smoke and beer welcoming me. Salvation sure stinks, I think and I laugh at my thoughts.

“You owe me a new hood, Pan”. Bull’s deep voice rises above the ruckus.