Red Eyed Edward Contest

Title: The Extant

Penname: Entry #9

Word Count: 9,077

Rating: M

Summary: EXTANT (adj) ~ [ˈekstənt, ekˈstant] ~ 1 archaic: standing out or above ~ 2 a: currently or actually existing ~ b: still existing; not yet lost or destroyed

Disclaimer: The author does not own any publicly recognizable entities herein. No copyright infringement is intended.

###

The bearded man stood on aching knees and heard the pop of his joints as he flexed them against their will.

He looked at the cloudy sky, glad for the cover. He removed the black leather jacket he wore and felt a chill that raised goosebumps on his forearms between a dizzying pattern of jagged purple scars.

Black crust that had caked between his fingers flaked off in chunks as he flexed his fists, still stiff from the night before. The muscles in his arms tensed and let go, over and over again, until his hands felt strong again.

He removed the filthy T-shirt that clung to his body, and then the socks, tennis shoes, ragged jeans and underwear.

He stood naked on the riverbank, all muscle and scar tissue and blunt ends.

Purple scars defined his face, more so than the beard. One ran from his left ear and along the contour of his cheekbone, down to his chin. Another crossed his forehead and disappeared into his eyebrow.

His entire torso was a horror. Criss-crossing his enormous muscles was a pattern of scars that went from his back to his front, across his ribs and chest. The scars were so brutal they could only have been inflicted on multiple occasions; to have suffered such trauma in a single event would have killed any man, even one like him.

Many of his scars had healed crookedly, making it seem as if the world looked upon him through a cracked window.

He dipped his hands into the stream and rubbed them together underneath the gentle trickle. He bent and brought a handful of cold water to his mouth, to the beard that had been there since the end of days, and he rubbed vigorously. Red streaks dripped from the long, wiry hair, so he repeated the process until the water ran clean

He sat on the damp ground and reached for the worn tennis shoes he had been wearing for the better part of a year now. He carefully filled the socks with rocks and tucked them inside the shoes, then wrapped that with his old T-shirt and pants. He put more rocks into the legs of the pants and tied them together, making sure the package was secure.

It sank when he threw it into the cold water. It would do no good to leave evidence behind.

He dipped his feet into the water and felt relief. He smiled, and he closed his eyes and enjoyed the moment. He waded in, despite the chill, and felt the kind of calm he had not experienced in ages. The icy water felt good on his skin; it took the itch away from his scars, if only for a moment.

Soon, he was standing on the bank and allowing himself to air dry. He pulled a fresh set of clothes from the tree branch he had hung them on after washing them in the stream the night before and put them on. He loosened the laces on the combat boots he had placed on the riverbank, first the right, then the left. He placed his right foot in, pulled the tongue taught, and tightened the laces just so. He tied a tight double knot and looped the extra lace behind his ankle, tucking it into the top of the boot, and finally flipping the top of the sock inside-out so it covered the top of the boot. He repeated the process on his other foot, pulled the cuffs of his pants over the boots, and stood tall to test them out.

They would do.

He put his coat back on and prepared for the day's journey. North, away from the city.

He double checked that his only possession, a fragile piece of paper tucked inside a yellowing Ziploc bag, was secured in his new backpack. He tightened the straps, clicked the safety clip together across his chest and adjusted the pack so it was taught. He reached behind him to be sure he could easily get to the knives he had placed in the side pouches.

Again, perfect.

He spun the knives, which he had already cleaned and oiled, so that the blades were facing behind him, spun them again, and spun them again. Satisfied, he slid them back into the slots. He repeated this process several times, as if he were practicing.

He stood there a moment, savoring the peace that would end soon. Before this, he had not eaten in seventeen days. He would not go that long again, no matter what it took.

Survival trumped peace.

Looking over his camp to be sure he had not missed anything, he noticed that he had. He walked to the edge of the forest and pulled a low-hanging branch from a tree, snapping it off cleanly. He ran the branch roughly over the footprints he had left by the riverbank until they were gone, and he tossed the branch in.

He paused before performing his one remaining task, savoring the moment, unsure when one like it would come again. He closed his eyes and took in the day. The sun shone through the clouds, catching the copper-brown color of his hair.

After a moment he was ready to move on. He walked to the corpses at the edge of the forest, and he wondered not for the first time this morning what the young couple had been doing out here alone. Empty backpacks, good quality clothes that were much too big for them, authentic military combat boots.

And they had guns.

An M-16 that looked to have come straight from a U.S. Army base, and an M9 Baretta pistol. But there were no bases around here, at least none that he hadn't already explored and found devastated.

The guns frightened him. No one had guns anymore, no one had ammo. And yet, their clips had been full when they'd taken the road that had led them to him. Once he was done last night, the man had tossed them into the stream.

The bearded man knew he was lucky to have found the young couple, in any case, even if they weren't much of a meal. All skin and bones, as they say. But blood is blood, and theirs would keep him alive.

For now. If he could figure out where they came from, perhaps for longer. Maybe even a long time.

The truth was he didn't know how long someone like him could last without a fresh meal. He was becoming desperate, fitting for a desperate age but no less worrying. Could he go three weeks? A month? It didn't matter. More than two weeks begat weakness, and weakness in this world was a death sentence. So he fed. He fed on stragglers, like this young couple, and he fed on families holed up in the wild. In the early days, after the rebellion, he had fed on large groups that thought they were safe on former military bases, on bands of travelers, on men and women and children. He fed on what he could find, and he did so without apology.

They were responsible for this.

The supply of humans was dwindling now though. The rovers were all but gone, hunted away by men like him. The campers in the wild, if there were any left at all, had nowhere to go. Move or die was the rule. The groups that populated prisons, military bases and the like were targets for the hordes. He could not go up against the hordes alone.

But he knew that if he did not change the way he did things, if he did not do it soon, he would die. He considered joining one of the hordes, but couldn't bring himself to do it. In the end, though, he knew he might not have much choice if he wanted to survive.

It was a curiosity, why he chose survival. Why anyone did. Giving up would have been easier. "Extinction is the rule," the astrophysicist Carl Sagan once said. "Survival is the exception."

Little had Sagan known.

But those were thoughts for later. Now, he had to dispose of the two corpses.

He held the dead man's bare feet in one hand and cut the rope that secured him to a strong branch and placed the body on the ground. He did the same with the female's body, then picked up the soup cans he had carefully placed last night and finished off the last of the blood that had trickled out. He threw the cans into the stream and picked up one corpse in each hand. He carried them into the forest. The stream would not do for this task. The bodies would float, and they would inevitably come to rest against a rock or an overturned tree downstream, and then the hordes would come. They would come and they would find evidence that someone had been here, despite his efforts to hide it, and they would track him and they would find him.

This is how the world worked now.

So the forest. He walked slowly between the trees, careful to avoid any established walking path as he ventured in.

He came upon a massive oak tree and set the bodies down. Scavengers would find them here, and they would pick the bones clean, he could disappear again.

###

He followed the Burlington-Northern rail line north, toward the Port of Seattle. He had a hunch about where his latest meal had come from.

He stepped from railroad tie to railroad tie so as not to leave a trail. He was reluctant to use the rail line, given its openness and its proximity to Interstate 5, but he didn't believe he had a choice. There was simply no other way to get where he wanted to go as quickly as this, and he needed to get there quickly.

If there were two stragglers, there were others. If he found two, someone else would find the others. Soon, someone would find the source. He only hoped the hordes didn't find it before he did.

A noise in the dense brush. An animal, or something else? He couldn't be sure. He fled from the tracks. Hid in the bushes. A minute went by. Two. Birds chirped and clouds parted and the breeze picked up and still he waited. Someone was out there. Every sense he had told him so.

"We know you're there," a voice called.

There were only four of them. They were men like him, what the humans called vampires, but beings that were much worse than the legend - and not nearly as hard to kill. He could tell by looking at these people that they were nothing like him, though. Their eyes glowed red like his rarely did, which meant they were well fed. But they were careless, allowing him to spot them before they took him down. They were spoiled and they were used to winning and they were already as good as dead.

He closed his eyes and envisioned what was about to happen. The corners of his mouth lifted into a smile. It had been too long.

He stood and revealed himself and no one said a word.

He pulled the knives from his pack and he waited.

The bald one looked at the fat one and laughed. The two in the back followed, with fake laughter. They would die first.

"Your pack," the bald one said. He held out his hand and puffed out his chest. "Now."

The bearded man said nothing. He did not move, nor breathe. The bald one nodded at the two in back. They came, one from each side, very fast.

He waited until they were close. Closer. Closer still. Close enough that he could smell their rancid breath and he could feel the air around him get denser with their approach.

The knives whistled through the air and struck their targets with a sound unlike anything found in the natural world, a smack not unlike a hammer striking steel.

He did not wait for them to die. He spun with ferocious energy and he retrieved the knife from the neck of the man on the left. He tore off the corpse's head, retrieved the knife from the forehead of the woman on the right, and crushed her skull with his scarred and angry hands. Without pausing he leapt into the air and as his new boots hit the ground with a solid thud he put both knives into the skull of the bald man with such force that bone shattered and brain tissue squirted into the air and some of it landed on his new boots, which displeased him. He would have to remember not to kill a man like that again.

The fat man ran.

The bearded man cleaned his knives and put them away and let the fat man go. He didn't want to follow him into a trap.

###

The camp was where he suspected it would be, at the railway crossroads within the Port of Seattle. It had been a major distribution point for goods arriving from Asia in the days before the world ended. That included billions of dollars worth of food. Just as importantly, the rail hub was a stopping point for goods that would eventually be shipped to South Asia.

Afghanistan was in South Asia, so those goods included military hardware.

Could it be that some group of humans had happened upon this rail distribution hub, hunkered down with an enormous supply of food and weapons, and gone undiscovered all these years?

There was no other explanation.

The camp had been expertly secured. He watched from the trees a hundred yards away. There was no visible activity, but no one secures an empty camp.

The sun set over his shoulder as he watched, waiting for something to happen. He knew it would eventually; he just hoped it was before the hordes showed up. Those four vampires he'd encountered on the way here were not alone. They were too confident, too well fed, too careless to be rovers.

Behind the fence, a flashlight clicked on, then off. Someone was coming.

He crouched down low and he held his breath, keeping his hands steady, open, fingers flexing, ready for the knives.

Someone was being lowered over the wall via a pulley and rope system. Brilliant. Getting people in and out like that meant they'd never have to open the gate.

It also meant, of course, that getting back in would be a slow, tedious process.

Perfect.

He watched the figure as the basket was lowered to the ground. It was a man, slightly built, dressed in black, wearing a backpack exactly like the one he now wore. That confirmed what he had suspected; the couple he'd killed the night before had come from this place.

He waited until the man was free of the camp. Waited further until the man was past him. Waited more to be sure no one else was coming. Once he was sure, he quietly stalked the man.

Why had he left the camp? Were they running low on supplies? Where was he going?

Curiosities only. None of the answers mattered.

He came up silently behind the man. Fifty yards, forty, thirty. He removed his knives slowly, inch by inch, and held them close until he was a mere ten yards away.

Pain shot through the bearded man's left shoulder, causing him to drop his knife and spin. He heard the shot as he hit the ground. Another bullet struck him in the thigh, and a third struck the ground inches from his face. He crawled away as quickly as he could, leaving one knife behind. The sniper continued to rain bullets down toward him, but scored no more hits. The man he'd been following did, however. He fired indiscriminately, striking the bearded man twice in the back.

It had been a trap.

He got up and ran, two more bullets striking him in his legs as he made his way into the woods. He ran until he collapsed, maybe a half a mile into the forest, the loss of blood making him weak. He found a place to rest, under a fallen tree in a gulley, and dragged himself in. He would heal, given time.

But he wasn't sure he had any.

He cursed himself for being so stupid. If something seemed too good to be true that's because it was. His history should have taught him that, if nothing else.

Commotion came from the direction of the camp. Spotlights shown. The sound of an engine roared to life. But he couldn't move an inch, let alone crawl back out of the gully to find out what was going on.

He would have to hope that he survived long enough to heal, and escape.

###

He drifted in and out of consciousness. He couldn't be sure for how long. A few hours? A whole day? It was dark outside, but that was all he knew.

The sound of dogs barking woke him.

He checked his wounds, found that they had healed sufficiently, leaving him several new purple scars. He stood on weak legs. He would need blood soon if he expected to survive whatever was coming for him.

He had only one knife left, but quickly found his backpack and strapped it on.

The dogs were getting closer. The hunters.

He tried to run, but couldn't go more than a few dozen yards before tiring out. How many times had he been shot? He must have lost a lot of blood. Expended even more of his stored up energy healing those wounds.

If he couldn't outrun them, maybe he could ambush them. He was weak, for a vampire, but he was certainly still stronger than a small group of humans and their dogs.

He climbed the closest large tree he could find, and waited. He couldn't help but laugh inwardly about his predicament.

The legendary Lion, hiding in a tree like a wounded housecat.

He shook it off.

They were coming for him and he would deal with them or he would die. That's what mattered. So he closed his eyes and he caressed his knife with his thumb as he imagined the things he could do with it, the things he would do, all of the terrible things he had done.

The scar on his forehead itched. He focused on the knife. The blade, carved to perfection. Here it was slicing a neck, embedding itself between ribs, taking off a head, gutting and stabbing and gouging. Always there, always reliable, forever there.

He felt his heartbeat increase, and he thought of the humans. How weak most of them they were, and how necessary.

At first, after "patient zero" had been discovered, they'd been scared out of their minds. They thought Dracula had arrived. They hunkered down, hid behind their walls. Debates ensued. Talk of concentration camps. Prisons. Torture. A cure.

The humans soon discovered that vampires were not as indestructible as fiction would have had them believe. They were ... alive, in a way. Their hearts beat and blood pumped through their veins and they breathed the very same air as the humans. They slept, they loved, they hated, they walked in the daylight and, if they were severely wounded, they died. No one was sure how long they might live otherwise, but evidence suggested hundreds of years, perhaps longer. Especially if they were well fed, which made them strong, stronger than any human. They healed remarkably quickly, which made them seem indestructible. But they were not.

The humans were too late, anyway. The vampires had already taken over by the time they figured out what was going on.

He had slowed his breathing now to once per minute. His heart remained calm, his blood pressure low, saving precious energy for what was coming. He focused on catching the scent of the dogs, and he appreciated the irony of a man sniffing for hunting dogs.

They were almost to him. He smelled the dogs first, of course. Then the humans, perhaps three or four of them.

He pounced and plunged his knife into the neck of the first one, a big man in combat fatigues carrying an M-16. The rifle let go a burst of gunfire as the man went down, the bearded man's lips clenched to the gaping wound on his neck.

He savored the blood. He needed it. He put the dead man's body between himself and the rest of the humans as the dogs began their attack.

He held the corpse up with one arm as he fed and tried to hold off the dogs with the knife in his other hand, all while dodging bullets from the other two humans.

He was going to lose.

He was going to die.

So he slowed time down. He held his breath. He looked out upon the scene before him and calculated distances. He gripped one dog between his fingers and crushed its throat. He picked the dead man up and he stood behind the body, using it as a shield as he advanced.

A bullet tore through the skin of his calf, but he kept going. Another grazed his scalp. Still he came. Finally, a round passed through the dead man's torso and struck the bearded man in the chest.

He sucked in a breath and kept going. He had no choice.

He threw the dead body into the air and attacked.

The closer of the two shooters had to duck out of the way, so the bearded man hit him first. A string of bullets tore into his back as he grabbed the closer human. He had his knife out, ready to plunge it into the man's neck, when another volley of gunfire took his legs out. The knife flew out of his hands and into the bushes.

He hit the ground hard.

His breathing coming in fits and starts, blood bubbling from his lips, he reached for his knife. It was just beyond his fingertips. Stretching. Almost there, a boot kicked it away.

He said nothing as two rifles bared down on him. Both weapons were cocked. Fingers on triggers. They fired almost simultaneously.

He refused to close his eyes. He slowed time and he watched his death unfold. This was it.

A streak of blackness came into view. It moved so quickly he did not know what it was. The streak flashed between him and the guns, and it screamed unlike any human could, a piercing, visceral sound that could shatter glass.

Before he knew what was happening, he saw two things: The humans standing before him were now unarmed; and the black streak was a woman, dressed head to toe in skin tight black leather with a set of loaded bandoliers strapped across her chest.

She had two fresh bullet wounds in her belly, she held the two M-16s in her hands, and she stood before him with a smirk on her face.

In the darkness, her eyes glowed the bright red of a well-fed vampire.

###

He awoke chained to a table. Heavy steel secured his arms and legs. Another chain was wrapped around his neck and padlocked. He was naked except for a towel laid over his crotch.

"He's awake," someone said.

Was it her? The one with red eyes?

He heard a door open and close, and then nothing.

He turned his head as much as he could, about four inches in either direction. He appeared to be in a makeshift hospital, a building that looked like it had once been a construction trailer.

There were three more stainless steel tables like the one he was chained to, empty IV bags hanging from poles, cabinets that he assumed held medicine or supplies, and, close enough to see but too far to reach, a small table with a bloody bucket on top.

His blood, he assumed.

Someone had performed surgery on him to remove the bullets. Someone had given him blood. Human blood. If they hadn't, he'd be dead. He could still taste it on his tongue, and he felt stronger than he had in months. Years, maybe.

"Give Mr. Cullen another pint," said a female voice just out of his eyesight.

"Yes Miss Swan."

A shuffling of feet, a door opening and closing, silence.

He said nothing.

Footsteps on tile, boots, a light step. The woman. Miss Swan. The one with red eyes. The vampire who led the humans. He could smell her now, the death on her. She had changed out of the leather, which had masked her scent. Another mistake he'd made, though he nor anyone else would have expected a vampire to be with a band of humans. It was unheard of. Impossible.

Still he said nothing.

"It really is you," she said. She approached, slowly, carefully. "I apologize for the chains." She stepped into view and he took in a breath, despite himself.

She was small, maybe a couple inches over five feet tall, and young, turned when she was in her early twenties. She had pale white skin with a hint of freckles, chocolate brown hair that flowed over her shoulders in waves, a nervous twitch in her lips as she spoke. But her eyes, despite their red color, had stopped him cold.

He knew those eyes.

"I felt I had no choice," she said, gesturing again at the chains that bound him.

He closed his eyes, forced away the memory. "Everything is a choice."

"Would you have chosen different?"

"I would have killed me when I had the chance."

"Yes, I know. As I said, I'm aware of who you are."

"Then why am I here? Why did you take those bullets meant for me?"

"I -" she stopped and leaned in closer. "You. You're him. The Lion. I didn't know. I didn't know, not when we sent James out as bait. Not when you escaped. Not when we sent the team and the dogs. Not until I saw you there on the ground, helpless. Your scars." She reached out, but pulled her hand back.

"How do you know me? I'm nobody. A rover. A parasite."

She smiled and leaned over so he could see her clearly. She put a hand on his bare chest. "Edward. May I call you Edward?"

He didn't respond.

"This one," she said, running her thumb over a scar that ran down the center of his rib cage. "They did this to you on the day of the failed rebellion."

He said nothing.

"And this one," she said, sitting on the edge of the bed and placing her entire hand over the longest, deepest scar. "You got this because of me." She looked into his eyes and he saw that she was crying.

"You're Bella," he said. "I never knew your last name."

She kept her hand resting on his chest as he remembered.

###

The end crept up on them, the way change usually does, and then it pounded them hard. It was over before the humans knew it had begun.

When disaster did not happen immediately, the initial scare over the newly discovered "vampires" died down. People moved on to the next celebrity scandal, the next environmental catastrophe, the next disease scare. Bird flu. Ebola. Vampires? Ho hum, the humans said.

First, the small towns fell but nobody noticed. Next, the vampires infiltrated mid-sized cities. Indianapolis. Charlotte. Seattle. Around the world they went, simultaneously, working themselves into positions of power, silently building armies in the hundreds of thousands.

More time passed. Weeks. Months. The rumors spread. Conspiracy theories. Cable news stories. Daily papers and magazines reported on it, and social media exploded. It went from curiosity to crisis overnight.

Almost immediately, the vampires hit the mega-cities with all their might. They slaughtered the humans by the millions; they turned a few, drank the blood of most of the rest. The last of them, a few million across the world, they rounded up like cattle because that's exactly what the humans had become, a source of food and nothing more.

Until The Lion set them free, if you could call anything in this rotten world freedom.

Edward felt the warmth of Bella's hand, still resting on the scar that ran diagonally across his abdomen. He reached for her hand, involuntarily, only to be stopped by the chain.

Bella got up from her perch on the side of the bed, folded her arms across her chest. "I'm sorry about the chains." She turned to leave, stopped. Started again but stopped when she reached the door.

"We found your backpack. We had to look inside."

"Oh," he said.

"I've placed it in your room."

"Thank you."

She paused again with her hand on the doorknob, turned around to face him.

"Where did you get it? I didn't even know it still existed."

Edward did not answer.

"You saved it? You've had it all this time, carried it with you?"

He whispered in response. "Yes."

She walked back to him, her combat boots thudding on the tile floor. "Why?"

Again, Edward said nothing. He didn't know how to explain. She stared at him, those eyes so familiar, glistening. She sat back down on the edge of the bed, and took his hand in hers.

He tried to pull away, but couldn't.

A minute passed. More. Time stood still as the two of them listened to one another breathe.

"I've thought about you every day since the rebellion," he finally said.

"Me, too." She gripped his hand more tightly, breathed in deep.

"She died a clean death," he said, looking into Bella's eyes. "Fast, painless. I saw to that."

"I remember."

"Your father, too. They tried to drain him, make an example after the uprising. But I wouldn't let them. Not after -"

"I know, Edward. I remember." She put her hand back on the scar over his chest, still deep and dark purple. "I remember this, too. I remember what Aro did to you. I remember your screams. The blood. All that blood."

He looked away then. "Pain does not matter."

"How did you do it?"

He remembered the beatings, the whippings, the arena battles. The deals he'd made with that savage, Aro. A monster in the true sense of the word. He'd forced Edward to make deals to save the innocent. Deals Edward made not because he wanted to, but because he felt he had to.

He was the only human who had ever defeated a vampire in battle, and he had earned a reputation because of it. The Lion, they had called him. It was a ridiculous nickname, but one that had stuck, especially after his capture. His vampire tormentors thought it was amusing, to put him into an arena with a vampire before crowds numbering in the tens of thousands. The survivor would get to live another day.

He never lost a match.

He remained their prisoner, and it would have stayed that way until his dying days if not for Bella.

"I did it," he said, reaching up to brush her cheek, "because no one else would."

She quickly leaned over and kissed him on the mouth. A hard kiss. He kissed her back, just as hard.

She pulled away and turned to go. "I can't."

"But you know you will." He broke the chain around his left wrist, put his hand around the back of her neck, and pulled her to him. Their lips met, softer this time. He ran his tongue over her lips and she let him. He broke the other chain and he wrapped both arms around her and he breathed hard and he kissed her with the kind of passion that he did not know he still possessed.

She fumbled with the buttons on her shirt, and then gave up and tore it free. He helped her remove it completely, unclasped her bra, and put his hands on her breasts.

She removed the rest of her clothes and climbed onto the bed with him, straddling him, chains still binding his ankles. She removed the towel covering him, and slid herself onto him.

When he came, Edward did not feel exhausted, as he remembered feeling after sex as a human. He felt exhilarated. He suspected this had less to do with being a vampire than it did with Bella.

As she dressed, Edward broke the chains binding his ankles. He watched her get dressed, buttoning her shirt slowly over perfectly smooth, pale skin. She escaped the camp without a scratch, and he felt like that was partly because of what he'd done.

"The horde is coming," he said. "I should go. You'll be safer without me here."

"Never."

They stared one another down.

"We've known they were coming for days," she finally said. "You can help. We actually thought you were one of their advanced team. They always send one."

"I took care of them on the way up here," he said. "Amateurs."

She approached him and kissed him softly, put her arms around his neck, looked down at his still naked body. "I suppose we ought to get you something to wear before you meet my team."

###

Everyone knew the horde was coming. Those three vampires he killed, the gunfire, the smell of fresh blood in the air after the battle with Bella's team. One or all would draw them.

Two days had gone by since he'd been brought inside these walls. His relationship with Bella seemed secure, but the people were wary. He had not seen Bella much at all, though, as she rallied her people to face the horde. She had introduced him to her top advisors - Jasper, Alice, Rose and Emmett - all humans, former military. He was cordial with them, but he mostly kept to himself. Watched how things worked. Counted. Waited.

Bella was the only vampire, and she was nominally in charge. She guarded the humans as a Doberman would guard its domain. As thanks, the humans kept her regularly fed. She had saved every last one of them at one point or another, and they owed her their lives.

There were 300 humans here, as best he could tell, none of them children. They'd been here for more than two years. Their supplies were running low, and they were desperate, which is why they'd sent that couple out, the people he'd killed. They were scouting for supplies. Medicine, food, weapons. They were almost out of everything.

The whole situation was about to get worse.

Edward finished getting dressed. He loosened the laces on the combat boots. He placed his foot in, pulled the tongue taught, and tightened the laces. He tied his double knots and stood tall to test them out.

He was ready for battle, so he headed outside.

The rain came down hard. It soaked his hair, ran down his leather jacket in streams. He stood guard anyway. If the horde was going to attack, now would be the right time. He watched through the chain-link fence as the rain fell. He noticed every movement of every branch in every tree within view. He heard the sound of the rain, smelled the fresh mildew. He could taste the electricity in the air.

His skin tingled with anticipation.

A human approached from the mess hall, slowly.

"Smoke?"

Edward said nothing. He looked back outside the fence, but kept watch on this newcomer out of the corner of his eye.

The man lit a cigarette with scarred hands. The flame lit his face, briefly, and Edward noticed again that this man's scars mirrored his own, though there were fewer of them, less severe.

"You were there," he said. It was a statement, not a question.

"Thirty seven days," the man said. He reached out a hand. "Jasper. We met briefly earlier, but I didn't know if you'd remember."

Edward shook it. "I remember," he said. "I'm Edward. Edward Cullen."

Jasper chuckled. "Yeah, I know who you are. You saved my life. More than once. You saved all our lives, in the end, though most of the people here know nothing about it." He smoked in silence for a while, wary eyes on the outside landscape. "How'd you do it?"

"You would be surprised," Edward said, "what one determined vampire can do with a set of knives."

"I always thought The Lion was human," Jasper said.

"I was. Until they gave me no choice."

Jasper laughed uncomfortably. "I would love to hear that story one day. But that's not what I was talking about. I meant, how did you do it, day to day? How did you survive what they did to you? I was in there for a few weeks, and it broke me. The scale of human suffering, I mean. I couldn't take it. You endured it for years, from what I've heard. I can't imagine. I mean - " He stopped, put his cigarette out on the soggy ground.

"I know you can't," Edward said. "And I wouldn't want you to." He went back to looking outside the fence.

"They're coming, aren't they?" Jasper said.

"There is no question."

"You know about the landmines, right?"

Edward looked puzzled.

"I just assumed you knew," Jasper said. "When we were watching you stalk us, you always stayed just outside the zone. Figured you'd spotted 'em, somehow. I guess you just got lucky."

Edward smiled. "I've always been lucky when it comes to killing."

"Speaking of that," Jasper said. He reached into his own backpack, and Edward tensed out of habit. Jasper pulled out a pair of brand new military grade combat survival knives. Curved nine-inch blades, black stainless steel. They weighed less than a pound each and yet, in the right hands, they could take down a platoon. "I heard you might like these."

Edward reached for them. "Thank you." He tested the blades against his skin, felt satisfied about their sharpness. He nodded to Jasper, and slid the knives into the pockets he'd sewed into his leather jacket long ago.

They fit, perfectly.

An explosion lit up the sky, far enough away that no debris fell into the camp. Jasper reacted quickly, ducking and running as a trained soldier would, but Edward did not move.

The rain stopped and the insects began their overnight song and the muscles in Edward's arms became taut ropes. Fifty yards to his left, he watched a sniper in the tower put his eye to the scope. The same in the sniper tower to his right.

Another landmine exploded.

The horde came into view. A hundred vampires strong, a sickening band of two dozen human prisoners chained up behind them. Blood bags. Food. Like a herd of cattle beholden to nomads. Edward closed his eyes.

He waited.

Another vampire approached. He was covered from head to toe in homemade body armor. Vampires were tough, they healed quickly if they were well fed, but they weren't indestructible. A volley of well-placed shots could take one down permanently. The vampire skirted the blown-to-bits body of his colleague and approached the gate. He was carrying something in his arms, something as big as he was.

Gunfire erupted. The snipers opened fire. Sparks flew. The clank of the bullets striking body armor rang through the air, but the vampire kept coming. A hundred yards. Eighty. Fifty. He was too close.

Another one came, also carrying something. Edward had to assume they'd gotten ahold of the last of the bombs from one of the nearby military bases.

"RPGs! Now!" someone yelled.

The snipers exchanged their rifles for grenade launchers, and they fired away. Explosions rattled the air, and both vampires went down. Their packages fell to the ground with their bodies, but they wouldn't stay there for long. More vampires approached, even as the snipers launched a new flurry of grenades toward them.

The potential prize, hundreds of humans, their bodies full of fresh blood, was too valuable to pass up.

Edward continued counting. He opened his eyes and flexed his muscles and he hit the fence at fifty miles per hour. He tore through the chain link as if it were not there, picked up one of the bombs in his right hand, skirted to the left and retrieved the other. He roared as he threw each of the 500-pound bombs into the air and he had timed it perfectly.

The first one exploded as it dropped onto the bulk of the horde, raining fire and debris upon them.

The second one hit the horde dead on, and Edward smiled as the last half dozen stragglers fled the scene, most with flames clinging to their clothing, bloody and wounded. All but one. A towering figure, long dark hair, pale white skin, and a flowing red overcoat that shrouded his form.

There was no mistaking the man who had tortured him for years. Aro was alive, and he was nearby.

Edward's life just took on new meaning.

###

Edward sat on the edge of his bed and flexed the muscles in his arms. His knuckles popped. His knees creaked as he stood, and the tendons in his shoulders and ankles stretched tightly as he bent to retrieve his boots from the floor.

He slid the boots on, grabbed his backpack and checked the contents one more time. He put two more pints of chilled blood in. Grabbed the can of precious gasoline that had been left outside his room and walked slowly toward the hole in the fence he'd made the night before.

"Thank you," Jasper said as he worked on patching the hole.

"It must be done, and it's safest if I do it."

"I don't just mean burning the dead," Jasper said. "I mean all of it. We wouldn't have made it last night if not for you. The prisoners, they're safe here now."

Edward turned away. "You would have made it without me."

The truth was that he wasn't sure they would make it now, even with the victory the night before. Aro was no ordinary opponent, and now that he had presumably discovered Edward's presence, there would be no stopping him. Edward would have to leave, and he would have to do it right now. His only regret would be not saying goodbye to Bella. He knew he couldn't do that, and he knew as well that he couldn't stay. He had no choice but to go.

He finished pouring the gasoline on the pile of vampire corpses and struck a match.

"You might want to step a little further back."

"Bella," he said, and he caught himself smiling again. "Why are you out here? And more importantly, how did you get out here without my knowing it?"

Bella smirked. She was dressed in her tight leather again, with guns strapped to her thighs and extra ammunition around her waist. She looked like a demon ready for battle. She approached Edward, ran her fingers over his freshly shaved face, and looked at the pile of bodies. "Will they ever stop?"

"No."

"Why do we keep going on, then? Why do you keep doing it? Do you ever ask yourself that?"

"No."

"That's it? Just 'No'?"

"Yes."

She pulled her hand away from his face and turned away. "Fuck you," she said.

Edward's jaw clenched, but he said nothing.

"Dammit, Edward. Talk to me! Tell me you hate me, tell me you love me, tell me you're going to kill every last one of them, tell me you're leaving on a boat to China tomorrow. God dammit, just tell me something. Anything. You haven't said two dozen words since you got here. And now? It looks like you're leaving. Is that what's going on?"

Edward closed his eyes, and he exhaled, dipping his head.

"We exist," he said, "and that is the only fact that matters. We exist in a world that we did not make, and that we do not control, and that tries to kill us at every turn. We exist, and he exists, and that cannot continue to be, Bella. In answer to your question, I continue doing what I'm doing because I can't not do it."

"Wait," Bella said, putting her hand on his chin and lifting his face. "Him? Do you mean him him? Aro? He's alive?"

"He is. I saw him last night, as the smoke cleared. He was there, Bella. I swear it."

"That can't be," she said. "I saw him killed. I saw you kill him, all those years ago. How? How is this possible."

"I don't know, and it doesn't matter. It is a fact, and it will be dealt with."

"What's that mean? It will be dealt with by whom? You? Alone? I don't think so."

Edward looked into her eyes then, and he saw that same determination he had seen so long ago, in the eyes of a young woman who had grown up too quickly, and he knew. He knew that she would join him, and they would either succeed in their mission or they would not.

But either way, the world would change.

###

"You never told me how you were turned," Bella said as they walked down the road, deserted but for abandoned cars littering the shoulder.

"Does it matter?"

"No," she said. "I guess it doesn't."

They walked in silence for a while.

"I was 22," she said. She shook her head. "Five years had passed since the rebellion, since you disappeared. I was with a group not unlike the one we just left behind, smaller but no less determined."

She looked away. "They attacked us at night, no warning. We didn't have the security like the place we're in now. Just a bunch of campers, essentially."

"You don't have to do this," Edward said.

"I want to." She took his hand in hers as they walked on. "I was badly wounded. I was dying, Edward, so I begged one of them to turn me. I was ashamed of that for a long time, ashamed that I was too afraid to die."

"Don't be," he said. "It is not our purpose to die, Bella. We do what must be done to survive, and no one should ever apologize for that."

They walked on as the sun began to rise higher into the sky.

"Where do you think he went?"

"He is watching us now," Edward said, scanning the environment with all his senses. He slid his knives from their slots in his backpack.

Bella looked to the trees, dense as ever.

"Be ready," Edward said.

She pulled her guns from the holsters on her thighs as they stopped in the middle of a desolate intersection. They'd traveled perhaps ten miles from the rail depot. The mid-day sun broke through the clouds, and a slight breeze kicked the leaves lining the side of the road into the air.

Edward slowed his heartbeat down and he listened to the world as it tried to speak to him. The rustle of the leaves. The branches swaying. The insects, the birds, the slow dissipation of the morning dew as the sun rose higher into the sky. They all told a story, and Edward knew that he must read it properly or he and Bella would die in this spot on this day.

He quickly grabbed Bella's hand and spun her around. He put his arm around her neck and pulled her to him. He kissed her, whispered in her ear.

"My seven o'clock," he said, his lips brushing her ear.

Bella nodded softly and kissed him back. "Ready."

Edward turned and streaked across the street as Bella rained gunfire on the spot he had pointed out. He heard bullets striking their target as he slashed his way into the brush.

A vampire came at him, teeth bared, blood rage in his eyes. Edward spun and sliced its head off without losing his stride. He turned and two more were coming at him. He twisted his knives in the air and went at them, gutting one while holding the other in the air, a knife entering under its chin and protruding from the top of its head.

He stopped to catch his breath and wondered what had become of Bella. He heard no more gunfire.

"She is here."

Edward turned and saw a half dozen dead vampires, their bodies riddled with bullet holes. Among them stood Aro, and he held Bella by the throat, his long, yellow nails already drawing blood from her neck.

Bella plowed an elbow into Aro's stomach, but the old vampire didn't budge. "Careful now, young lady," he said, smiling and looking into Edward's eyes the entire time. "You're too precious to harm. Not yet, anyway."

Aro had always been the strongest vampire, the only one Edward had never defeated, apparently, though he thought he had until he'd seen him last night.

"You're all alone now," Edward said. "Let her go, and I will let you live."

Aro had Bella pinned to him, her back to his face, his left arm wrapped tightly around her torso to hold her arms down, his right arm on her neck, his claws digging into her skin. Blood ran freely from her wound, and Edward knew that she would need human blood to heal if this went on much longer.

Aro dug his nails in further, and Bella lost consciousness.

"OK, stop," Edward said. "I'll give you what you want."

"Ahhhh," Aro said, "but you do not have what I want, Mr. Cullen."

"And what is it you want?"

Aro smiled and looked into the sky with wide eyes. "Everything," he said.

"I'll give you myself, then. Just please, let her go," Edward said. "You must have wanted revenge all these years. It was me who destroyed what you had. I'm responsible, no one else. Not Bella, and not any of the humans still left on this planet."

Aro paused, as if he was considering Edward's offer.

"Bwahahaha!" he bellowed. He shed a tear as he bent over in laughter, still clutching Bella's limp body. "That was perfect! Just perfect."

"Here," Edward said. He smiled gently and put his hands out as an act of contrition. He bent at the waist and he placed one of his knives onto the ground. He looked up and when he saw Aro blink he looked into Bella's lifeless eyes.

Silently, he told her he was sorry for what he was about to do.

He roared as he flung his remaining knife through the air. It whistled as it spun. It struck Bella in the soft flesh just below her sternum, off to one side. The stainless steel sliced its way through her skin and kept going, missing her vital organs. It exited through the fibrous muscle of her back and already Bella was beginning to collapse.

The military grade knife punctured Aro's red overcoat. It sliced into the thin layer of the skin covering his breastbone, shattered his ribs, and tore through his heart muscle as if it were not there. The knife continued onward, undeterred, the force behind it was so strong. It sliced cleanly through arteries and muscle and slowed only when it struck and shattered the hard bone of Aro's spine. Still it continued on, severing nerves and bone, before exiting, cutting through the overcoat once again and embedding itself six inches into an oak tree.

Aro collapsed.

Bella collapsed.

Edward ran to her, tore his shirt from his body, and pressed it to her wound. The tight leather was already doing a good job holding her skin together. Edward reached for Aro's limp body with his other hand, retrieved his knife from the tree, and removed the man's head.

Bella opened her eyes, blood bubbling from the corner of her mouth. "You're something else," she said before passing out again.

Edward picked her up, careful not to make her wounds worse, and retrieved the chilled blood from his backpack. He kissed her gently. "So are you," he said, feeding her.

When she was done, he took off running, her semi-conscious body slung over his shoulder.

###

Bella was fully awake before they arrived at the railyard.

"You can put me down now," she said.

He did.

She stood on shaky legs, still a mile from home. He put an arm around her waist and led her along, slowly.

"I'm going to be fine, you know," she said.

"I know."

"Which means you can let me go now."

"Never again."

She smiled and stood on her tiptoes to kiss him.

When they arrived at the railyard, the gate swung open for the first time in years. Jasper, Alice, Rose and Emmett came running.

"Get her some blood," Edward said, handing her off to Alice.

He turned to go.

Jasper put a hand on his shoulder. "Going somewhere?"

"Not far, and not for long," Edward said. "I have something to take care of."

He made it to the spot quickly, and he found Aro's corpse right where he left it. He waved away a swarm of flies and picked up the head in one hand, the body in another. He slung Aro's corpse over his shoulder, and headed back to the railyard.

Across the way from the gate, he found the right tree. He removed his backpack, found a length of rope, and strung it over a good, strong branch. That would hold Aro's corpse.

When he was through stringing it up, he pulled two pieces of paper from the pack. The one in the yellowing Ziploc, he put aside. On the other, he wrote a note and pinned it to Aro's red overcoat.

Consider this a warning

There will not be another

- The Lion

He sat down on a nearby rock and picked up the paper in the plastic bag, a photograph he had been carrying with him for ten years, one he had looked at in this very manner every day since the rebellion that had freed her, and led her away from him for so long.

He stared at her face as if he'd never seen it before, as if he hadn't seen it just a half hour ago.

And this time, he shed tears of relief.

###