Distortion Offensive by James Axler Page B

geologist who had been reduced to walking with a crutch after what had happened out in Tenth City. Clem showed her the plastic bag and the pair of them exited together.
    Grant took one final swig from his coffee cup. “And I guess I’d better go find out what’s cooking downstairs,” he grumbled to himself as he stood up, oblivious to the joke he had just made.

Chapter 6
    His name was Dylan and he had once been a farmer—a month ago, a lifetime ago. He was forty-two years of age, his dark hair was cut short, and the beginnings of a beard marred his chin now as he trekked through the pouring rain on his way to who knew where. He walked with a slight limp as he made his way along the rain-slick dirt road where it turned to mud, and his right shoulder slouched a little where he had taken a bullet. His right ear, too, had taken a bullet and now his head was patched, a damp bandage held in place by tape where the Cerberus warriors had helped him before they had departed, leaving him and the others to fend for themselves as detonations racked the stone ville of Ten, the brief home of Dylan’s god and master.
    Three weeks ago he had been a farmer, selling his produce in a town called Market out in the Saskatchewan wilds in the northern area once known as Canada. That was before the world had changed, and a god had arrived on Earth to bless him.
    Dylan was a simple man, firm in his narrow-minded belief that physical strength could somehow conquer all obstacles, glorying in his ignorance. He was what his wife called temperamental or, when he was out of earshot, angry. Dylan had lived his life in the mistaken belief that he would someday be important, that he, too, might make the decisions of gods, and so when the godhad shown interest in him, he had mistaken this for a sign of his own importance.
    The rain soaked Dylan’s dark hair, pasting it to his head and leaving his clothes wringing wet. He didn’t notice. Nor did he think about his wife anymore, not since meeting with his god.
    There had been a moment, out in Tenth City, where he had seen his old life, embraced it again as though the god had never come. But once the Cerberus warriors had departed, the comforting tone in his skull had begun again, where the stone god called Ullikummis had buried a tiny piece of himself like a farmer sowing a seed.
    Now Dylan walked across the uninhabited countryside, searching for the next town. Once there he would spread his message, spread the word of Lord Ullikummis, and so provide the world with its savior, as so many others were doing across the continent.
    And if the people didn’t listen…?
    Dylan smiled, his hand playing across the pocket of his pants until he felt the clutch of tiny stones that waited there, buds from the body of Ullikummis that would guarantee enlightenment.
    They would listen. One way or another, they would listen.
    As he made his way past a small copse, Dylan saw the lights twinkling in the distance and heard the sounds of music and laughter. There was a settlement here, a handful of cottages where the people farmed together in their struggle for survival. So much of the world remained barely populated, even now, two hundred years after nuclear hostilities had brought them to the brink of extinction, but Dylan knew if you walked far enough in a straight line you would find people.
    He strode onward, smiling as he felt the satisfying chink of the pebbles in his pocket, like that ancient story of Jack with his magic beans. He would take enlightenment to the people around him, and they in turn would spread the gospel of Ullikummis, as others had already begun spreading it into the south.
    Enlightenment was coming, Dylan knew. Enlightenment was coming and the world would change because of it.
    Enlightenment through obedience.
    His name was Dylan and he had once been a farmer; now he was the first.
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    R EBA D E F ORE HAD FINISHED her examination of Balam’s adopted daughter,