Bill opened his eyes.
He was alone.
No Splock. No Duo. No comforting presence of pointy-eared logic or swashbuckling piracy. Just him, the wind, and the distinct smell of burning something that had probably been important.
He was on a roof. The top of a building—or what was left of it. The structure beneath him had seen better centuries. Cracks spider-webbed across the concrete. Rebar protruded from broken edges like the bones of some massive, long-dead creature. Smoke rose from a hundred fires below, painting the sky in shades of orange and black that would have been beautiful if they weren't announcing the end of the world.
A siren wailed in the distance. It had the exhausted quality of something that had been screaming for weeks and had long ago given up hope of anyone listening.
Bill knew this look.
He'd seen it before. Dozens of times. On dozens of worlds. After he and his fellow Space Troopers had finished "liberating" them for the Emperor.
"Post-apocalypse," he muttered. "Lovely. My favorite aesthetic."
The wind picked up. It tugged at his uniform—singed now, edges blackened, the fabric telling a story of recent unpleasantness. It also tugged at something else. Something flapping against his leg.
Bill looked down.
A magazine had been jammed under a piece of debris, and the wind was working it free. Pages fluttered. Colorful pages. Pages covered in images that—
He snatched it up.
The cover screamed at him: NIGHT OF THE LIVING CHINGERS by Stephen Thing. Below the title, a scene of unspeakable horror: seven-foot-tall Chingers—not the seven-inch kind everyone knew, but giant, shambling, zombie versions—pursuing screaming women in various states of undress. The tagline read: "They came back... for MORE!"
Bill stared.
Bill's face twisted. "Stephen Thing. I know that name. Hack. Pervert. Writes the same book every time—scary thing does scary things to people, the end. And people buy it. They line up. They call it art." He kicked the magazine. It fluttered, revealing an inside spread even worse than the cover. "Art. Sure. Art is what I'm looking at right now. They're doing what with their tail-claws? That's not even anatomically—"
He threw the magazine away from him. It fluttered in the wind, pages still turning, showing the world images that would haunt anyone unlucky enough to glance up at the right moment.
"I hate that guy," Bill announced to the empty sky. "I hate him so much. Every time I see his name on something, I know I'm going to need brain bleach. And yet he keeps writing. And people keep buying. And the universe keeps spinning, indifferent to the filth it contains."
He took a breath.
Heroic pose. That's what the moment called for. Standing on the edge of a ruined skyscraper, looking out over a burning city, the wind in his hair—he needed to look heroic. Needed to feel heroic. Needed to say something heroic.
He squared his shoulders. Lifted his chin. Parted his lips to deliver a speech that would echo through the ages—
A gust of wind caught him.
Not a gentle gust. A real gust. The kind that had been saving up aggression for just this moment. It slammed into Bill's back, lifted him off his feet, and sent him stumbling toward the edge.
He grabbed.
Rebar. Rusty, sharp, glorious rebar. His hand closed around it, and he swung, dangling forty stories above what used to be a street.
Something soft and papery slapped against his face.
The magazine. It had circled back. Of course it had. The universe wasn't done humiliating him yet.
Bill found himself staring at a centerfold. A two-page spread featuring a Chinger and a woman in a position that would have required extensive consultation with a contortionist and possibly a veterinary surgeon.
"THING!" he screamed at the uncaring sky. "I HOPE YOU ROT! I HOPE YOUR NEXT BOOK GETS USED AS EMERGENCY TOILET PAPER IN A PRISON CAMP! I HOPE—"
The wind stole the rest. He threw the magazine as hard as he could, watching its pages flutter down, down, down into the burning city, where it would probably be found by some future archaeologist and treated as a sacred text. Good riddance, Blood Ravin'!
Bill looked around. The roof. The fire. The complete absence of any safe way down.
He pulled himself back onto the roof and surveyed his options. Stairwell door? Blocked by debris. Elevator shaft? Open, but elevator cars didn't work in post-apocalypses—everyone knew that. Fire escape? He peered over the edge. The metal ladder ended twenty feet down, rusted away to nothing.
Something caught his eye. Leaning against a broken railing, attached by a heavy chain, was a skateboard.
A skateboard.
In the apocalypse.
Someone had chained it to the rail, probably assuming it would be safe up here. Idiot. Nothing was safe anywhere anymore. Bill grabbed the chain, twisted, pulled. It snapped with a satisfying crack.
He examined his prize. Wood. Wheels. Bearings that might still work. And a long, sloping concrete slab leading from the roof down to... somewhere. Somewhere lower. Somewhere hopefully less on fire.
He straddled the board. Gripped the edges. Closed his eyes.
"Here goes nothing."
He pushed off.
The ride was fast. Terrifyingly fast. The wind screamed past his ears, drowning out the sirens, drowning out his own involuntary yells. Concrete flashed beneath him, inches away, rough enough to peel skin if he fell.
He didn't fall.
For about three seconds.
Then the board hit a bolt.
A single, rusted bolt, protruding from the concrete like a middle finger from God. The front wheels caught. The board stopped. Bill didn't.
He flew.
Arced through the air in a trajectory that would have impressed a ballistician. Tumbled. Spun. And landed in a pile of garbage—the softest landing available, which wasn't saying much, since this garbage included broken glass, rusty cans, and something that might have been a dead animal or might have been a very old sandwich.
He lay there, staring up at the orange-black sky, counting his injuries.
Everything hurt. That was one. His head was spinning. That was two. His left hand—the right one that served as left—was tangled in something sticky. That was three.
The siren wailed on. The fire crackled. Somewhere in the distance, something exploded with a sound like a giant stepping on a crate of lightbulbs.
Bill extracted himself from the garbage with the slow, careful movements of a man who had learned that rushing led to regret. Something wet dripped from his hair. Something else—something that crunched—had attached itself to his shoulder blade. He spat out what tasted like a corn chip that had seen better centuries.
"Unbelievable," he muttered. "Absolutely unbelievable. I'm a decorated hero of the Galactic Empire. I've fought Chingers. I've been inside computers. I've been propositioned by toddlers. And now I'm tasting last week's trash in what appears to be—"
He looked up.
A billboard loomed over him, tilted at a forty-five-degree angle, its surface scarred by fire and time. The message was partially legible:
WELCOME TO CLEVELAND
The Best Location in the Nation
Someone had added to it. A marker had drawn a face—thin, pale, vaguely androgynous—next to the words. And beneath the face, a name:
M. L. Gore
Bill stared.
"Cleveland," he said. "Not New York. Cleveland. How does a temporal vortex drop me in Cleveland?"
He looked at the name again. Gore. His brow furrowed.
"Gore. Like—violence. Dismemberment. Bloodshed." He glanced around nervously. "Some maniac named Gore is running around drawing his face on things. Marking his territory. This is how it starts. I've seen the training films. First the graffiti, then the—"
Music erupted from a nearby building.
Broken windows on the first floor revealed the source: a radio, somehow still working, its speakers crackling with the unmistakable sound of synthesizers. A voice, rough and insistent, filled the ruined street:
"...'til you see the signs and come running to my open arms. When will you realize? Do we have to wait 'til our worlds collide?"
Bill approached cautiously. Peered through the shattered glass.
Inside, slumped against a wall, was a body. Humanoid. Mostly. The skin had an unhealthy gray-green tint, and the head—well, the head was the interesting part. There were three of them. Stacked vertically, like some kind of grotesque totem pole, each face frozen in an expression of terminal confusion.
Bill looked at the radio. Looked at the body. Looked back at the radio.
"You know," he said aloud, "I've always suspected music could kill. All those years in the barracks, listening to whatever garbage the guys played—it's a miracle more of us didn't end up like this." He gestured at the three-headed corpse. "Probably listened to one too many Depeche Mode songs. Probably—" He stopped. "Probably Gore did this. M. L. Gore. It's a name, right? A person? Who draws his face and then—"
He felt it.
Something in his pocket. Something that hadn't been there before.
He reached in. Pulled out a radio.
Not a big one. Handheld. Military-issue, sort of—the kind of ruggedized communication device that could survive orbital re-entry and still work well enough to call for help. It had no business being in his pocket. It hadn't been there five seconds ago.
Bill stared at it. Then at the working radio in the building. Then at the corpse with three heads.
"The song," he whispered. "The song put it there. The lyrics—'come running to my open arms,' 'worlds collide'—it's like the music is making things happen."
From the building, the song continued:
"Don't say you're happy out there without me. I know you can't be, 'cause it's no good..."
Bill pressed the button on his mysteriously acquired radio.
"Hello? Hello? Splock? Ham? Chewgumma? Anyone? Pick up, you pointy-eared bastard, I know you're out there somewhere analyzing something!"
Static. Harsh, unforgiving static.
He tried again. "Duo! You oversized flamenco enthusiast! Answer me!"
More static. If anything, it sounded smug.
Bill took a breath. Switched tactics.
"Splock, you logic-obsessed son of a—"
Nothing.
"—I hope Delia finds you! I hope she tracks you across every timeline and makes good on every single one of her promises! I hope—"
Static. Still static. But for just a moment, Bill could have sworn the crackling sounded offended.
He lowered the radio. Looked around at the burning city, the three-headed corpse, the billboard with its mysterious Gore-face.
"I'm alone," he said. "The only survivor. The last man standing in—" He checked the sign again. "—Cleveland. Of all the places in all the timelines, I end up alone in Cleveland."
He started walking.
The streets were empty. Buildings burned or crumbled or both. The sky remained that sick orange-black, as if the sun had given up and gone elsewhere. And everywhere—everywhere—there were dogs.
Big dogs. Huge dogs. Mutated dogs with matted fur that came in colors no natural canine should possess—chartreuse, magenta, something that looked like plaid. Their eyes were mismatched. Their tongues hung from their mouths like wet flags. Drool pooled beneath them in shimmering puddles.
They looked exactly like Ryder.
All of them.
Bill froze as a pack of them rounded a corner—seven, eight, nine massive creatures, their fur clumped, their expressions universally bewildered. They saw him. Stopped. Stared.
He braced for attack.
Instead, they bolted.
Ran the other way. Disappeared into the ruins with the speed of creatures who had learned that humans meant trouble.
Bill watched them go.
"Ryder had a family," he murmured. "Or started one. Or was patient zero for some kind of canine apocalypse." He shook his head. "Doesn't matter. What matters is—"
He stopped.
The radio in his hand crackled. Not static this time. Something else. A voice, faint and distant, struggling to break through:
"—ll? B— can you— are you—"
Bill pressed the button. "Splock? Is that you? Where are you? What happened to—"
The voice dissolved. Static reclaimed it.
But it had been there. Someone was out there. He wasn't alone.
Probably.
He pushed through the shattered glass door of what had once been an apartment building. The lobby was dark, lit only by the orange glow of fires reflecting off what remained of the windows. Graffiti covered every surface—layer upon layer of messages from the desperate, the angry, the bored.
One caught his eye. Big letters, spray-painted in aggressive red:
ALAN WILDER LEFT DEPECHE MODE AND NOW THIS HAPPENED
Below it, in neater script, someone had added: Correlation does not imply causation.
Below that, in shaky block letters, a third hand had written: YES IT DOES, YOU IGNORANT STAIN
Below that, a fourth: Both of you are wrong. It was the toasters.
Below that: I BLAME THE TOASTERS
Bill stared at the wall for a long moment.
"Alan Wilder," he read slowly. "Wild Anal? No—Wilder. Alan Wilder." He squinted. "Sounds like a name. A person. Someone who... left something? And then this happened?" He gestured vaguely at the burning city outside. "So this Wilder person—this Wild Anal—he's a terrorist. Or a saboteur. Or maybe—" A thought struck him. "Maybe he's like Gore. Another killer. Working together. Gore and Wild Anal. A team."
He filed this information away for future reference. If Splock ever showed up again—if the pointy-eared bastard hadn't been eaten by mutant dogs or seduced by time-traveling toddlers—Bill would ask him about it. Splock knew things. Annoying things. Useless things. But also occasionally useful things.
The radio crackled.
Bill nearly jumped out of his charred uniform. The device spasmed in his hand, emitting a shriek of static so loud and so sudden that he dropped it. Directly into a puddle. Of course.
"Scheiße!" He fished it out, shaking water from the casing, praying to whatever gods might still be listening that it still worked.
A voice emerged. Loud. Distorted. Unmistakable.
"—HERE, MOTHER—" CRACKLE "—WHERE ARE YOU ALL?! I FOUND A—" BUZZ "—JACKHAMMER! I'M THE KING OF THIS CITY NOW! KING HAM DUO, FIRST OF MY NAME! BOW BEFORE—" STATIC "—LITTLE WHITE HIPPO THINGS! THEY WALK ON TWO LEGS! THEY WON'T STOP STARING!"
Bill pressed the button. "Duo! Duo, it's Bill! Where are you? What are you talking about?"
"—AND THE LITTLE BOYS IN HATS! THEY SMOKE PIPES! THE PIPES ARE TOO BIG FOR THEIR FACES BUT THEY DON'T CARE! THEY JUST—" CRACKLE "—FRIENDS! WE'RE ALL FRIENDS HERE! COME LIVE WITH US IN THE VALLEY! THE VALLEY OF THE—" BUZZ
"Duo! Focus! Where are you? What do you see?"
"—EVERYTHING! I SEE EVERYTHING! THE SKY IS ORANGE AND THE GROUND IS BROKEN AND THERE ARE THINGS—" The signal cleared for a moment, and Ham Duo's voice came through with startling clarity: "—little white hippopotamus people, Bill. On two legs. With big eyes. And the children wear hats. I think they're trying to sell me something. Or adopt me. I can't tell which."
Bill ran.
Out of the lobby, into the street, following the direction of Duo's increasingly unhinged transmissions. Rubble blocked his path; he climbed over it. A chasm split the asphalt; he jumped across it, landing hard on the other side, rolling to absorb the impact.
"Duo! Keep talking! I'm coming!"
"—AND THE MUSIC! IT'S ALWAYS PLAYING! SOMEWHERE! JUST OUT OF REACH! LIKE—" Static. Then: "—BIG CLOCK? NO. BIG CLOCK WITH NO HANDS. THAT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE. NOTHING MAKES SENSE. IS THIS WHAT BEING YOU FEELS LIKE, BILL? IS THIS WHAT IT'S ALWAYS LIKE?"
Bill dodged a falling chunk of masonry. It shattered behind him, spraying debris across his back.
"YES!" he yelled into the radio. "IT'S ALWAYS LIKE THIS! YOU GET USED TO IT!"
"—DON'T WANT TO GET USED TO IT! I WANT—"
The signal died.
Bill kept running.
A chunk of wall floated past his head. Not falling—floating. Hanging in the air like it had forgotten what gravity was. Bill ducked instinctively, then looked up. More debris drifted overhead—pieces of buildings, a car, what looked like an entire hot dog stand—all suspended in the orange sky as if the city had decided to redecorate.
"Explosions," Bill muttered, dodging another floating chunk. "Must be the explosions. Blows things up so hard they forget to come down. Makes sense. In a physics-defying kind of way."
He ran on.
The radio crackled again. Duo's voice, fainter now, but still there:
"—THE RIVER OF FIRE... SO PRETTY... THE HIPPO PEOPLE SAY IT'S NATURAL... SAY IT'S ALWAYS BEEN THIS WAY... I THINK THEY'RE LYING... BUT THEIR EYES ARE SO BIG AND TRUSTWORTHY..."
"Keep going north!" Bill shouted into the radio. "I think! The smoke is thicker that way! Or maybe that's south! I can't tell! Just keep talking!"
"—MY JACKHAMMER... IT'S THE ONLY THING THAT'S REAL... WHEN I HOLD IT, THE HIPPO PEOPLE BACK AWAY... THEY DON'T LIKE THE NOISE... THE NOISE IS ME... I AM THE NOISE..."
Bill ran faster.
The floating debris thickened. He had to weave between chunks of concrete, dodge drifting cars, duck under a lamppost that rotated slowly in the air like a lost compass needle.
Bill found Ham Duo in a collapsed parking structure, surrounded by carnage.
The carnage was... unusual.
Dozens of bodies lay strewn across the concrete—large, pear-shaped creatures with rounded bellies and gentle faces. They looked like hippos. White hippos. Dressed in what might have been tie-dye, if tie-dye had been invented by people who'd never actually seen colors.
At the center of the slaughter, Ham Duo stood triumphant, gripping a construction jackhammer that was still running—still violently running, its motor screaming, its bit chewing empty air. The vibrations traveled up Duo's arms, through his shoulders, and into his entire body, shaking him like a paint mixer on high.
He was grinning. Shouting something that might have been a war cry or might have been the lyrics to a song he'd heard on the radio. It was impossible to tell through the tremors.
Bill approached cautiously, stepping over fallen hippo-things. One of them caught his eye. It wasn't white like the others. Its skin shifted colors as he watched—pink, blue, green, back to pink. And it had a fringe. A dark fringe, swept across its forehead in a style that Bill dimly recognized from magazine covers.
"Emo hippo," he muttered. "Of course. Why not."
He reached Duo and grabbed the jackhammer's power cord. Pulled.
The machine died with a cough. Duo kept vibrating for three more seconds, his legs still shaking, his arms still juddering, his face frozen in an expression of pure masculine triumph.
Then he fell. Face-first. Into the mud.
Bill helped him up. They looked at each other—two survivors, two friends, two idiots who should have known better.
They hugged.
It was awkward. Brief. Manly. The kind of hug that acknowledged shared trauma while maintaining plausible deniability.
"Duo," Bill said. "You found a jackhammer."
"I found the jackhammer." Duo's eyes were bright, wild, slightly unfocused. "In a construction trailer. Behind the remains of a 7-Eleven. It called to me, Bill. It sang."
"What did it sing?"
"'Demolish.' Just that one word, over and over. I couldn't refuse."
Bill looked at the bodies. "And these?"
"My subjects. They resisted my authority. I established dominance." Duo gestured proudly at the carnage. "I'd say I've made my point."
Bill nodded slowly. "Right. Okay. Have you seen Splock? Or Chewgumma?"
Duo's expression flickered—a moment of clarity in the madness. "Splock? No. But I saw something else. A kid. Teenager, maybe. Skinny. Dark hair. Looked at me like I was beneath his notice."
Bill's attention sharpened. "A kid? What kind of kid?"
"Called himself 'Alexander of Shmacedon.' Like it was a joke, but he wasn't laughing. Had a pack of dogs with him—those big ones, the ugly ones, like the one from the York house. He was talking to them. They were listening."
Bill felt pieces click into place. "Alexander. The baby. He'd be—what? Eight? Nine? But you said teenager."
"Time moves weird here. You've noticed."
"I've noticed." Bill grabbed Duo's arm. "This is important. The kid with the dogs—he's connected to everything. The Historian's plan. Delia. The whole—" He waved at the apocalypse around them. "This. We need to find him."
Duo nodded. "I can take you to where I saw him. But first—" He looked at the bodies. "These weren't the ones I mentioned on the radio. The little guys with hats and pipes. Those were their friends." He nudged a dead hippo with his foot. "They kept talking about a valley. A blue valley. And a house. A blue house. And some kind of comet or something. It was hard to follow. They were very peaceful. Very calm. It was infuriating."
"So you killed them."
"With a jackhammer. Yes."
Bill decided not to pursue that line of questioning.
They walked. Through rubble, past fires, under floating debris that rotated slowly in the orange sky. The city groaned around them, settling into its ruin.
Duo's radio crackled.
"—according to my preliminary observations, ambient radiation levels exceed Nocturnian safety standards by approximately 0.3 percent. This is within acceptable parameters for short-term exposure, though I would not recommend establishing permanent residence. Additionally, I have noted that local mutated life forms display an unusual interest in my auditory appendages. This is illogical, as ears are not a viable nutritional substrate. They contain no significant protein content and—"
Bill grabbed his radio. "Splock! Splock, you pointy-eared bastard, where are you?!"
Silence.
Then, calmly, as if nothing had happened:
"—my ongoing survey of local flora and fauna continues. Preliminary results suggest that the probability of locating edible organisms is low, but non-zero. I shall continue my investigations and report further findings as they become available. End transmission."
Static.
Bill keyed the mic again. "Splock! Come in! SPLOCK!"
Nothing.
Duo took the radio. Adjusted something. Listened. Shook his head.
"Gone. Either he's ignoring us or something's blocking the signal."
"Could be his batteries."
Duo gave him a look. The kind of look reserved for people who suggested that the sun might go out because someone forgot to refill it.
"Batteries. Bill. These radios use SPT. Sympathetic Power Technology. They draw from any electromagnetic source. Radio waves. Power lines. The ambient energy of a light bulb. They don't have batteries. They are batteries."
Bill stared at the silent radio. At the static that wasn't speaking.
"So he's not answering because he can't answer."
"That's one possibility."
"What's the other?"
Duo didn't say anything. He didn't have to.
The floating debris spun overhead. Somewhere in the distance, a pack of dogs began to howl.
They walked through a graveyard of music.
Store after store, their windows shattered, their contents spilled across the sidewalk. Vinyl records cracked underfoot like brittle autumn leaves. Cassette tapes unraveled in colorful streams. CD fragments glittered in the ash like discarded promises.
"Music," Bill observed, kicking aside a mangled guitar, "is dangerous. I told you. That three-headed corpse by the radio? Music did that. Too much synth-pop. The brain can only process so many arpeggios before it rebels."
Duo nodded sagely. "The beatings will continue until morale improves. Or until the beat stops. One of the two."
Ahead, silhouetted against the orange sky, stood a building that didn't quite fit the surrounding destruction. Its spire still pointed heavenward, though half of it had crumbled. Stained glass windows gaped empty. A cross—slightly crooked, like the universe had given it a playful shove—hung over the entrance.
"A church," Bill said. "One of those Earth religion places. Something about a guy on a stick?"
"That's the one." Duo squinted at it. "They worship some fellow who got himself executed. Very dramatic. Very self-important. The symbol is—" He made a gesture that might have been a cross, or might have been a man with his arms out. "—you know. Like a turkey on a rotisserie."
"Right. The rotisserie guy. My mother mentioned him once. Said he was popular with the weak-minded."
"Probably accurate."
They stood for a moment, contemplating the building.
"I'll bet you anything," Duo said, "that's where the kid is. The Alexander kid. The 'anti' one."
"Why?"
"Because if you're going to be the opposite of something, you set up shop in their territory. It's basic villainy. You occupy the symbols of your enemy and twist them."
Bill considered this. "Or maybe he just likes the acoustics. High ceilings. Good reverb."
"Also possible."
They approached the church. The doors hung open, one of them torn from its hinges and lying across the steps like a welcome mat for the damned. Inside, darkness waited, punctuated by shafts of smoky light from broken windows.
The smell hit them first.
Dog. Lots of dog. The kind of thick, wet, fur-and-saliva smell that coats the inside of your nose and refuses to leave. Underneath it, something else—rotten meat, maybe, or just the accumulated filth of a world that had stopped caring.
Their eyes adjusted.
Dogs everywhere. Huge ones, sprawled in the pews, curled in the aisles, draped over the altar like furry gargoyles. They looked exactly like Ryder—the same matted multicolored fur, the same enormous tongues hanging out, the same expressions of profound cosmic confusion. Clones, probably. Or offspring. Or just a really persistent genetic line.
Some of them were chewing on things. Green things. Pointed green hats, to be precise, the kind with little bells on the ends. And pipes. Long-stemmed tobacco pipes, the kind favored by small, philosophical creatures who spent too much time contemplating islands and comets.
Bill nudged Duo. "Looks like your hippo friends' buddies didn't make it."
Duo surveyed the remains. "Told you. Jackhammer don't discriminate."
At the far end of the church, on a throne constructed entirely of garbage—crushed appliances, broken furniture, the skeleton of a vending machine—sat a boy.
Ten years old, maybe. Hard to tell under all the attitude. On his head, a crown made of red tin cans, the words HEROINCOLA visible on each one, wired together with what looked like stolen telephone cable. Around his shoulders, a cape. A child's pajama top, pink, with faded cartoon animals. It was too small for him. Much too small. It hung like a bib.
Bill stared at the cape. "That's Delia's? It's a girl's pajama top!"
"Has to be. Look at this stupid baby pink, these silly unicorns." Duo's voice carried genuine admiration. "The 'anti-someone' wears his incubator's hand-me-downs. That's commitment to thrift."
The boy—Alexander, it had to be Alexander—struck a pose. One hand on his hip. The other pointing dramatically at nothing. His chin lifted. His eyes narrowed.
"I am Alexander of Shmacedon!" he announced. His voice was high. Reedy. The voice of a child playing pretend. "Lord of the Ashes! Master of the Wasteland! Ruler of—"
His leg swung.
It didn't reach the floor.
He dangled from the throne, one foot kicking uselessly, the other wedged against a protruding car door. For a moment, he froze, trying to maintain dignity while also trying to find purchase.
Then a dog stood up.
It was huge. The biggest of them. Ryder Senior, maybe, or a clone of a clone. It stretched, yawned, ambled toward the throne with the casual confidence of something that had never been told what to do.
Then the creature lifted its leg and urinated directly onto the throne's footrest. The stream was impressive. Prolonged. Aimed with the kind of precision that suggested practice.
Alexander's face went through several expressions in rapid succession: confusion, horror, outrage, and finally a kind of sputtering, apoplectic fury that turned his cheeks the color of the HeroinCola cans on his head.
"NO!" he shrieked. "BAD DOG! BAD! I AM THE DESTROYER! YOU CAN'T—THAT'S MY THRONE! THAT'S—"
The dog finished. Shook. Wandered back to its spot and lay down, completely unrepentant.
Bill laughed.
It started as a snort, built to a chuckle, and erupted into full-throated, tear-streaming, can't-breathe laughter that echoed through the ruined church. He leaned on Duo for support. Duo was laughing too, though more quietly, more appreciatively—the laughter of a connoisseur witnessing a masterpiece.
"That's—" Bill gasped. "That's the Anti-something? That's the future ruler of—" He pointed at Alexander, who was now trying to scrub the urine stain with his precious cape. "I held him! When he was a baby! He was cute! He smiled at me! He reached out his little hands! And now—now he's THIS?"
Alexander's head snapped toward them. His eyes blazed with the particular fury of someone who has been seen at their worst.
"You!" He pointed a shaking finger. "You mock me? You DARE? I am Alexander of Shmacedon! Conqueror of Ten Thousand Worlds! The dogs—THEY WILL TEAR YOU APART!"
He turned to the nearest canine. "Kill! Kill them! Attack! RIP AND TEAR!"
The dog opened one eye. Looked at Bill. Looked at Duo. Looked back at Alexander.
It yawned.
Another began licking itself in a place that dogs should not lick in public.
A third—the one who had done the peeing—simply closed its eyes and went to sleep, snoring gently, a small bubble forming and popping at its nostril with each breath.
Alexander's face went from red to purple.
He slid off his throne—dropped, really, since his legs were too short to reach—and ran at the nearest dog. His small fists flew. He kicked. He screamed.
"You're supposed to OBEY ME!" Alexander shrieked. "I am the DESTROYER! I am the ALPHA AND THE OMEGA! I am—"
He was running now, darting between dogs, kicking indiscriminately, his voice rising to a pitch that hurt to hear. The dogs tolerated it with the patience of creatures who had learned long ago that humans were loud and pointless.
One of them—a female, Bill thought—was nursing puppies. Alexander's foot caught one of the pups. Not hard, but enough.
The mother's eyes opened.
She looked at Alexander.
Alexander, suddenly aware that he might have made a tactical error, backed away.
The mother stood. She was not the biggest dog, but she was the closest. And her expression had shifted from confusion to something else.
Alexander ran.
Straight for the altar. Straight for the pile of junk that had been his throne. His cape—Delia's pajama top—flapped behind him, catching on debris. He yanked it free. And his body landed—with a wet, audible splat—directly in a pile of what could only be described as canine contributions to the ecosystem.
He lay there.
For a moment, there was silence.
Then, from the pile, a sound emerged. Not a roar. Not a threat. Not a declaration of world-conquering intent.
A sob.
Alexander of Shmacedon, Lord of Fire, Master of the Wasteland, Destroyer of Civilizations, began to cry.
Not dignified tears. Not the quiet weeping of a tragic hero. Ugly crying. Face-contorted, snot-bubbling, full-volume wailing. The kind of crying that babies do when they've exhausted every other form of communication.
Bill lost it.
He collapsed against a pew, howling with laughter, tears streaming down his face, one hand beating against the wood in helpless rhythm. Duo wasn't much better—he'd slid down to sit on the floor, his shoulders shaking, his face buried in his hands.
The dogs watched. Some of them seemed mildly curious. Most didn't care. One, the same one that had marked the throne, wandered over to the crying boy and licked his face—a gesture that might have been comfort or might have been curiosity about the new flavor.
Alexander wailed louder.
Bill gasped for air. "This—this is—the great conqueror—the reborn Alexander—I can't—I literally cannot—"
The church echoed with laughter and crying and the occasional disinterested bark. Somewhere outside, the world continued to burn. But in here, for just a moment, the apocalypse had become a comedy.
Duo watched with the expression of a man who had just witnessed something beautiful.
"Yep," he said. "That's the guy. That's the one who's supposed to unite humanity under a single banner. That's the reborn Alexander the Great." He shook his head slowly. "History has jokes, Bill. Really, really good jokes."
Bill wiped the tears from his eyes, still chuckling. "You know," he said, "when he was a baby, he was so cute. Little pink cheeks. Tiny fingers. He smiled at me. He—"
"Shut up." Ham Duo's voice was flat. Final. "Just... shut up."
Bill blinked. "What?"
"Splock. He explained this to you. More than once. The evolutionary thing. The protective mechanism. Babies are programmed to be cute so adults don't eat them. It doesn't mean anything. It certainly doesn't mean that particular baby—" He pointed at the sniveling, feces-covered boy on the floor. "—was anything other than a temporary vessel for cosmic evil wrapped in a marketing campaign."
"I know, but—"
"No buts. You did this. Your stupid nostalgia. Your inability to see past a pair of chubby cheeks." Duo paused. His expression shifted. "Actually... thank you."
"For what?"
"For reminding me. Splock. We need to find him. And I know exactly how to do it."
He strode toward Alexander with the purposeful gait of a man who had dealt with difficult children before. The kind of man who had probably sold difficult children to space pirates, Bill realized with a shiver. There was a confidence in his approach that suggested extensive experience with tantrums, negotiations, and the occasional need for physical redirection.
Alexander looked up. His face was a mess: tears, snot, smeared dirt, and a lingering aura of canine digestive history. He tried to summon his earlier defiance, but it came out as a wet sniffle.
"Listen, you little pipsqueak." Duo loomed over him. "We're looking for someone. Pointy ears. Logical. Looks like he's constantly smelling something bad. You seen him?"
Alexander's lower lip trembled.
"Don't cry again. I swear, if you cry again, I'll—" Duo caught himself. Took a breath. Tried again, this time with the forced patience of a daycare worker confronting a particularly trying case. "We're friends of your sister's."
The effect was immediate.
Alexander's eyes widened. His tears stopped—not gradually, but as if a switch had been flipped. A strange expression crossed his features. Not quite longing. Not quite fear. Something in between, mixed with a heavy dose of discomfort.
"Deedle," he breathed. "Delia."
"The same. The one who liked the pointy ears. The one who—"
"I know who she is." Alexander's voice had dropped. Grown older, somehow. More complicated. "She's... changed."
Bill stepped forward. "Changed how?"
Alexander looked away. His fingers picked at a loose thread on his ruined cape. "She left. Went somewhere. Still in the city, I think. But she's... different now. Big plans, she said. Big appetites."
"Appetites?" Duo raised an eyebrow. "What kind of appetites?"
"Scallops." Alexander's voice was small. "Galician scallops. She eats them constantly. Says our—" He paused, his face twisting. "—her father loved them. The computer. The one from the planet of bottled brains."
Bill exchanged a glance with Duo.
"My father was a god," Alexander continued, his voice rising. "A real god. Zeus. Olympus. Not some tin can with delusions of parenthood. I'm better than her. A hundred thousand times better. It doesn't matter that I spent eight years in her—" He stopped. Swallowed. "That part doesn't count."
Duo muttered under his breath. "Eight years in her what? Wait—the embryo. The transfer. He was in her. Before the transfer to the mother. That means—"
"Don't think about it," Bill advised. "Seriously. Don't."
Alexander was still talking, his words tumbling out in a messy stream. "She learned Portuguese, you know. And Galician. For Toronto. She says Toronto is paradise. All because her stupid computer father liked the skyline there. I made a paradise HERE. In Cleveland. I made this. The fire. The ruins. The dogs. This is MY kingdom. But does she care? No. She wants Toronto. TORONTO."
Bill grabbed the thread. "Toronto? Why Toronto?"
"Because the computer liked it! And Vancouver! And Portuguese restaurants in Canadian cities! She's obsessed! She talks about it constantly! 'The Galician scallops in Toronto are to die for, Xander. The architecture in Vancouver is so soothing, Nander.' I don't care! I have dogs! I have a throne! I have—"
He gestured at the pile he'd just fallen in.
"Right," Duo said. "That."
Bill tried again. "Why Cleveland? Why not New York? That's where you started. That's where the house was. Where the plan was supposed to—"
Alexander waved a dismissive hand. "New York is boring. Everyone goes to New York. Cleveland has... potential. And the dogs like it here. Something about the lake. I don't know. I don't ask them. They don't answer."
Bill stared at him. At the pathetic crown. The ruined cape. The army of indifferent dogs. The kingdom of ash and fire.
"This," he said, "is the great conqueror. The reborn Alexander. The—"
"Don't," Duo warned.
"I'm not saying anything. I'm just... observing."
"Observe quietly."
They stood there for a moment. Alexander sniffled. A dog farted. Somewhere in the distance, something that might have been a building or might have been a very large appliance crashed to the ground.
"Cleveland," Bill repeated. "He chose Cleveland."
Duo nodded slowly. "The universe has a sense of humor. A really, really cruel sense of humor."
Alexander looked up at them, his eyes red and watery. "Are you going to help me find her? Deedle? She's my sister. Sort of. It's complicated."
Bill opened his mouth.
Duo grabbed his arm. "We'll think about it. First, the pointy-eared one. Then maybe your sister. Then maybe—" He looked around at the ruined church, the indifferent dogs, the boy who thought he was a god. "—maybe we all need therapy."
Alexander's face crumpled again. "I don't need therapy. I need respect. I need—" He started crying.
Bill and Duo backed away slowly.
The dogs watched with mild disinterest. One of them began to snore.
Bill wiped the last traces of laughter from his eyes. "Okay. So we've found the self-proclaimed Lord of Cleveland, his army of indifferent dogs, and approximately seventeen tons of canine waste. What's the plan? How do we find—"
The radio screamed.
Not words—not at first. Just noise. A burst of static that seemed to carry something beneath it, a shape trying to form through the interference. Bill grabbed it, held it close, as if proximity could force coherence.
Then, cutting through the crackle:
"—found something. Something... fascinating. The local customs here are unlike anything I've encountered. The way they—" Static. "—interact. The physicality of it. I never imagined—"
Splock's voice. But wrong. Strained. Breathless in a way that Splock was never breathless. The voice of someone who had discovered something that had broken through his legendary composure.
"Splock!" Bill shouted. "Splock, where are you? What's happening?"
"—never experienced anything like this. The... the connection. It's illogical, and yet—"
More static. A sound that might have been a gasp. Might have been something else.
Then silence.
Long. Unbroken. The kind of silence that fills a room and refuses to leave.
Ham Duo's face had gone pale under its layer of grime. "That didn't sound right. That didn't sound right at all."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean—" Duo swallowed. "I mean he sounded distracted. Flustered. Splock doesn't get flustered. Splock doesn't get anything. He's a walking logic engine with ears. And he just sounded like—"
"Like what?"
"Like someone who found something he wasn't supposed to find." Duo looked at the radio. "Or something found him."
Bill's stomach dropped. "You think—"
"I think something might have eaten his ears. Those were nice ears. Very pointy. Very snackable."
Bill wanted to argue. Wanted to say that no, Splock was fine, he was just investigating, he'd turn up any minute with a full report and a recommendation for further study. But the silence from the radio was heavy. Accusing.
And somewhere, deep down, a tiny voice whispered that maybe—just maybe—the universe had finally gotten tired of the logical one.
He pushed the thought away. It wasn't friendly. It wasn't comradely. Even if Splock did lecture him constantly. Even if he did explain things that didn't need explaining. Even if his ears did twitch in that annoying way whenever Bill said something stupid.
He shoved the thought away. "We're finding him. Now."
They ran.
Behind them, Alexander's voice followed, high and whiny: "Wait! You can't leave! I'm the Destroyer! I command you to—" A wet sniffle. "Also, my sister changed a lot in ten years. Like, a LOT. You should see her. She's not the same. At ALL."
Neither of them looked back.