6th Horseman, Extremist Edge Series: Part 1 by Anderson Atlas Page A

suddenly get a rush of energy. It’s like I am at that
Bed Bath & Everything all by myself again, but this time the
empty store is now an empty world. I feel like I’m a kid, too. I
pass an old man, dead as roadkill, on the corner of Morningside
Avenue, and take his cane. I walk around, swinging the cane over my
head and around my finger. I run up to a car and smash the cane
into the side window. The glass shatters and the cane cracks. I
throw it aside and turn toward Central Park.
    I wish I had that Nerf gun. Scratch that, a
real gun. An R.B.F.G. A really big fuckin’ gun. I turn the corner
and my desire is realized. There’s a sandbag wall sheltering a
military Humvee.
     

     
    Of course it doesn’t start. I check the dead
soldiers for weapons. They have been stripped already, but I don’t
give up. These guys always have backups. With my awesome good luck,
I find a small revolver in the boot of one of the dead soldiers.
It’s loaded. I look for more ammunition, but find none. Well, I
have six shots, anyway. I move on, continuing toward the park. I
want to use one of the bullets badly, but decide to wait until I
get to the park. Maybe I’ll try shooting a duck or something.
    When I get to Central Park I try to ignore
the corpses. During their last moments it seems like they started
hangin’ on each other. I see groups of bodies all heaped on each
other like somethin’ out of Dante’s Inferno without all the
fire. It makes my chest tighten so I look away. I go to the lake,
looking for a duck. I don’t see one, or any other kind of bird for
that matter. There are some dead birds along the waterfront and a
ton of stillness everywhere else. It’s like I’m in the eye of a
hurricane. There are dark clouds thickening and swirling around
me.
    I go back to the street and take aim at a
traffic light. I breathe easy and slowly squeeze off one round.
Boom! The traffic light bursts into shards. It feels good, but it
doesn’t get rid of this dark feeling growing in me. The feeling is
kinda like when I take too big a hit off my bong. I just gotta
ignore it, but it’s there, in my veins, thumping and swimming
through my body like death trying to crash my party.
    “Hey!” yells some guy from across the road.
He walks up to me. He has jet-black curly hair that’s clipped right
above his shoulder. He has a dark black beard and, as he gets
closer, jet blue eyes. He has a huge hiking backpack, water bottles
clipped to his shoulder straps, a pair of binoculars hanging around
his neck, and a pistol in one hand.
    “Have you seen the military?” he asks.
“Anyone, for that matter?”
    He looks like a regular enough dude, so I’m
not freaked. “Nah. No one left but dead bodies.” After I say the
words, I want to barf. The feeling passes. “Where you headed? Looks
like you’re gonna hike a mountain,” I say, trying to sound as
pleasant as I can. Little does this guy know, I’m the killer, the
mass murderer, even though I didn’t quite know what I was doing at
the time.
    “I’m getting out of the city. Everyone’s
dead.” He looks me up and down as if he’s trying to decide if I’m
real. “It’s gonna start stinking here in the next day or so.”
    “Yeah, no shit.” I look around. “I guess I’m
gonna do the same.” I actually feel better now that I ain’t alone,
which is weird.
    “My name’s Ian.”
    “What’s up? I’m Ben.”
     
     
     
     

Chapter 1.9
Tanis:
     
     
    I t’s dark in this
vent. Too dark. I yell for my Dad and scream for my Ma. I cuss
every word I’m not allowed to say. I kick and scream some more. I
black out for a while and wake up, hoping I’m just dreaming. Of
course, this isn’t a dream. It’s so hard to breathe. There are so
many other places I’d rather be. This is like the time when I was
forced to go to the opera with my class and my Ma tagged along.
That would be better than this. Or that time I was forced to ride a
stinky, dirty horse. Or when I was forced to go to