Throne of Exile by Harper Alexander

Author:Harper Alexander [Alexander, Harper]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-01-30T16:00:00+00:00

11:

Judge, Jury, and Excommunicator

All eyes swiveled to him, disbelief and bewilderment causing a charged silence to settle around the cavern.

What storm? Surely there was no way he had missed the raging, cataclysmic event that had swept across the earth destroying most of civilization?

Galant was the first to recover from the unexpected bombshell. “What do you mean, ‘what storm’?”

Banit shook his head. “I didn’t…know there was a storm?”

He didn’t… How could he…?

Nobody quite knew what to do with that, and Banit caught on to our dumbfounded uncertainty.

“I missed something, didn’t I?”

“You could say that,” Galant confirmed sardonically.

“Not just ‘something’,” Sal filled him in, seemingly just because she was too impatient to endure such ignorance. “The apocalypse.”

Shock settled over Banit. “You mean…?”

“Gnarly fit of aether. No survivors. Get the idea?”

“But…you’re all here.”

“Yeah, and that’s bloody it. We crammed in this hole, and the aether passed us by.”

“You didn’t notice anything?” Galant pressed, suspicion darkening his countenance. “Not a murmur of thunder? Not a speckle of rain? No strange blue lightning bludgeoning everything in its path?”

“I’m sorry – I haven’t the foggiest what you’re going on about. Truly, everything’s gone?”

I revisited my theory that he was crazy. He had to be.

“Is he for real?” Sal posed to the alcove in general, then bent back over cleaning her gun with a shake of her head, patience spent. I couldn’t imagine why her weapon needed to be cleaned again. It was still gleaming from the last time she’d serviced it. Old habits, I supposed. Something to pass the time. To retain a sense of normalcy.

“The world as we knew it, yes,” Deano answered Banit. “Bits and pieces remain. Possible survivors like us, that we’ve yet to encounter.”

Banit was looking more lost and dejected by the second. “I knew I was never going back, I just… It’s been so lonely. So, so lonely. And now this…”

Finch clapped him on the shoulder, unaffected by the man’s woes. “You’ve got us now.”

At first, Banit didn’t look consoled. He swirled his brandy morosely around his glass. Then, abruptly, he changed his tune. Raising his glass, he initiated a toast. “To the last men…and women…on earth.”

The crew drank with him, but I was stuck on the way his eyes slid coyly to me, just for a moment, when he stressed ‘women’. There was something off in that glance. Something that made me just a little wary of drinking too much brandy that night.

*

“You were right about our friend, after all,” Galant murmured conspiratorially on our way into the city the next morning. “He is a loonie. He must be. How else do you miss the entire apocalypse?”

Deano overheard, leaning in to the huddle. “Could it have come through when he was knocked out?” His billowy-sleeved elbow nudged me, since Galant hadn’t been there for that part of the story. “That is how he escaped the marshes, after all. Drifting unconscious downstream with a blow to the head.”

“Maybe,” I said, really not sure of anything.

“A blow to the head?” Galant asked. “From what?”

Deano scratched the back of his neck.

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